Re: VMs: Re: The Currier papers

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello GC:

> If you don't mind, I'd ask for historical reference
> only, what led you to participate in the EVMT and
> help produce a
> transcription that has nothing to do with either
> observed or statistical
> properties of the text, and is counter-intuitive the
> the very information you've posted by Currier?

It was long recognised that Currier's alphabet was
not adequate for more detailed transcription:
- his choice to make all I-shaped strings single
  characters, while the C-shaped strings remained
  strings of C's. 
- Some characters were recognised by the FSG alphabet
  and are absent in Currier.
- There was analysis by D'Imperio and taken further
  by Reeds, of the various ligatures, which would
  need to be encoded using numbered codes.

When starting to do an improved transcription,
the original idea was to use the far more accurate
Frogguy alphabet. In the end, its principles were
kept in the newly designed Eva alphabet which
differs mainly in that it reduces the use of the
quote and eliminates the need for numbers for some
of the most frequent characters (4, 2, 8, 9).

The real difference lies in the fact that Eva
is 'extended' and has an a priori designed means
to allow inclusion of rare characters, either
as ligatures, or through use of numerical
codes referring to the high ascii area.
Thus, all characters that anyone identifies as
being significant, can be added in this area.

Of course, opinions will differ forever on what
is 'significant' in the above sentence.
All transcribers have different opinions.
We are now far ahead of Currier when it comes to
our capability to observe the VMs text.

I have said from the beginning, and still 
want to stress, that the individual characters
in the Eva alphabet are not meant to identify
individual units of meaning. Thus, it was possible
to transcribe without making any decision on
that, and the decision is left to the user of a
transcription file. The availability of Jacques
Guy's tool BITRANS, to apply such decisions
very easily, played a big role in this appraoch.
I used do it myself when I still did numerical
analyses.

This is it, from a historic point of view.
A good, detailed transcription exploiting the
capabilities of the Eva alphabet is not yet 
available. Most transcriptions in the interlinear
are converted (automatically, using BITRANS)
from texts in FSG or Currier.
Takeshi used Eva from the start, but rarely
(if at all) used ligatures or high-ascii values.

Cheers, Rene


		
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