Re: VMs: VMS Word context similarities

[Heikki Qvist <heikki.qvist@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Koontz John E wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Heikki Qvist wrote:
>
> > Yes. First you have a plaintext, then you chipher it, and then rewrite
> > (and maybe rechipher) it with these fancy symbols.
>
>
> I don't know that there'd be much point in reciphering it, but, of course,
> I have no idea what was actually done.  Unless we are able to intuit the
> ciphering scheme - and there have certainly been some interesting attempts
> at this, with and without spiritual assistance - we're in the position of
> having to deduce a function equivalent to the inverse of the composite of
> any multiple cipherings.  In effect, we can see only one super-
> enciphering.  Even if we came up with a decipherment, we might never know
> what the original enciphering process was.
>
> Of course, as you say, whatever has been written is written in Voynich
> script.  The simplest assumption is that the text is in the clear, so to
> speak, once the script is understood, and my gut feeling is that the
> script is peculiar enough both as an artifact and in terms of how its
> elements pattern in the text that simply rendering texts in the script
> might be the only cryptographic process involved.  An ancient Middle
> Eastern scribe faced with an alphabetic text might well be baffled, if he
> tried to make it work like a cuineiform logographic-syllabic system.
> However, I am not very confident of this "simple encoding" hypothesis.
>
>
> > I am maybe annoying for you veterans (additionally that I might be
> > wrong). So bare me..
>
>
> Nope - and I'm not really one of the veterans.

Neither am I although I feel sometimes really old. But I am professional 
problem solver...

> > Firstly you should ignore everything about language and consider it as
> > raw data and handle it with maths.
>
>
> If it is a representation of language - and lots of useful written data
> isn't language - ignoring it as language would be a rather odd thing.  I
> am no cryptographer, but it seems to me that most decipherments depend to
> some degree on taking advantage of what we know about langauge.

Text (generally speaking , not only VMS) itself doesn't have any 
meaning, it's raw data, without human involvement. Ciphering isn't 
actually (I am a bit simplifying things here but in principle I am 
right;) nothing else but method to hide information so that it is seen 
as data, not as information. It you want to people to think you are 
stranger, do thing the way what is not familiar to them.

> > Ciphered text doesn't necessarily show the structure of the language
> > used to write the plaintext.
>
>
> I can imagine some sort of holographic technique in use today, but I
> suspect that before computers were available ciphered messages would
> normally be transformations of the linear text and so would reflect its
> linear properties, if in an obscured fashion.

Yes, As a starting point to solve this, I am trying to posite myself in 
the place of that guy (or girl) who wrote VMS. I can't tell what to 
thought but I can imagine what was technically possible.

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