Talk:Voynich manuscript/Archive 1

message: A few claim that the fact that some of the drawings appear to have required a microscope and others a telescope, long before either were invented, mandates the involvement of extraterrestrials. Others see these factors as further cause for suspicion regarding the manuscript's authenticity.
The telescope is from 1608, the microscope from 1609. When is the manuscript presumedly dated to be "long before" the invention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.224.97.8 (talk • contribs) 16:27, 4 December 2003
::AFAIK the manuscript has never been physically/chemically dated, as the Yale University wouldn't allow it. Which in itself casts some doubt over its authenticity.--84.188.195.179 19:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  telescope and microscope drawings 

message: sometimes dubbed "Voynichese"
I deleted this: since the manuscript hasn't been deciphered, this adds no information. I added some detail from the very carefully presented Voynich Ms site, however. I removed the link to the rector at Prague, who won't ever have his own entry at Wikipedia. "of Cronland" is part of his name. Wetman 22:59, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voynichese adds nothing to article 

message: Actually, I'm surprised that two aspects of this topic have been overlooked:
# IIRC, the connection with John Dee implies that he obtained/created the manuscript while serving as a secret agent for Queen Elizabeth. (I'd add this informaiton, but I no longer have the book that suggests this possiblity, & I can't say much more about this possibility than what I've just written.)
# Beginning with Colin Wilson, who mentions the Voynich Manuscript in his short story "The Return of the Lloigor", it has appeared in a number of Cthulhu Mythos stories as a possible copy of the Necronomicon. -- llywrch 19:47, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  John Dee secret agent of QEI & Necromincon connection (alleged) 

message: Here are some topics that should be added to the "Theories and Speculation/Contents and Purpose" section:
*Astronomy. René Zandbergen's suggestions about the Zodiac diagrams being astronomical tables (ephemeris,star rises, etc.); Robert Firth's proposed identification of the classical planets.
*Bogus illustrations. Theory that illustrations are only a decoy for sensitive text, e.g. Stojko's proposed decipherment.
*Spa catalog. Example of the Puteolans, organ-shaped tubs as metaphors for relevant illness, Wenceslau's bath-bible, etc.
*Anatomy. Biological section could be an anatomical treatise, disguised as a spa catalog.
*Cathar suicide rituals (and also Elizabeth Batory?). (Should we mention Brumbaugh's cucumber juice etc. bit? ewww!...)
*Shennong Bencao as the contents of the recipes section.
Any volunteers?
Jorge Stolfi 05:46, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if someone were to flesh out those ideas a little more, we could the Theories about Contents and Purpose and break that off into a seperate article, which would reduce the size of this one and allow for a more detailed explanation of the others. --Mitsukai 01:43, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Several additional points to add 

message: I and several others have worked on this one: it's been recently overhauled by Jorge Stolfi, and it strikes me that it's shaping up nicely.  Smerdis of Tlön 17:01, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow! Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 02:16, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments from sucessfull nomination at [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates|Featured article candidates]] 

message: This word skryer seems to be introduced as a kind of specialized term, but it looks like a variant spelling of "scryer" (or "scrier"), from the ordinary word "to scry" .  Is this the case, or is this an unrelated, deceptively similar term? —Muke Tever 20:46, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I learned the word from John Dee's diaries; now I am no longer sure whether he spelled it "skryer", or whether it was my mistake. Anyway, thanks for the correction. Jorge Stolfi 09:30, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  'skryer' = odd spelling 

message: I don't understand the connection between the name and the abbreviation used throughout the article. Shouldn't it simply be 'VM' rather than 'VMs'? I've always understood that adding an s at the end is to indicate plurality. e.g. "I always forget my PINs."  to indicate more than one PIN.  Isn't the 'Voynich Manuscript' singular?--Danny Rathjens 02:40, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)
: It is singular, but (I presume) it's based on "ms", a common abbreviation for manuscript: hence "VMs" for Voynich. It does look like a typo, though. — Matt 02:48, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I can venture a guess, though I more or less think there's no need for abbreviation here and the ought to be spelled out. MS is the abbreviation for manuscript (but both letters should be capitalized, not only the M.) Properly, it should be VMS or Voynich MS: I think it'd be better just to find-and-replace VMs with Voynich manuscript. -- Nunh-huh 02:52, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, I believe ms for manuscript is properly not capitalized; depending, of course, on the society in which one asks. I rarely see it capitalized in publishing. Vms looks odd; VMs makes sense to me. -- Mariko 14:45, 21 June 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Chicago Manual of Style uses "MS": others may or may not use "ms". It makes good sense to avoid "Ms" to avoid confusion with the female equivalent of "Mr". - Nunh-huh 18:50, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why abbreviated VMs? 

message: # for some reason I can't make the images smaller. can somebody help me here?
# I am ot sure about the copyright issue here. I simply downloaded those images from another web site. But still this things is centuries old!
the discussionabout copyright takes place in the 
Wikipedia:Reference_desk#copyright of a object in a image x copyright of the image of an object
--Zero00 00:19, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  about the new images 

message: The "hoax" section says that Kelley "apparently" used a Cardan grille in his construction of Enochian. Any evidence for this? It would seem odd given the nature of Enochian. P.Riis 06:40, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Just an additional note: I asked this question (in a bit more detail) on Talk:Edward Kelley--the same assertion is made there. I think it's a conflation of two different things Graham Rugg has asserted. P. Riis 02:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, I'm removing the reference to the use of a Cardan grille in Enochian. P. Riis 18:38, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kelley, Enochian, Cardan grille 

message: Fairly sure I've seen a theory that the script is in fact composed of tiny markings visible under magnification and forming a second level of script.  Think that theory was debunked on the basis that the second script was in fact an artifact resulting from cracking of the aging velum.  Add this with a Wikipedia link to micrography? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.157.146.246 (talk • contribs) 09:42, 21 September 2004
: Absolutely right. This was the hypothesis of Professor William Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania. His book was published posthumously in 1928 and refuted by John Manly of the University of Chicago three years later. Anyway, I'll add what I can to the article. Lusanaherandraton 11:17, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Micrography 

message: The page has been renamed from "Voynich Manuscript" to "Voynich manuscript". Since that is the name of this specific manuscript, not of a general class of manuscripts, I would think that the more correct form is the capitalized one, as in "White Mountain", "Domesday Book", etc. I vote to undo the move... Jorge Stolfi 04:36, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. "Voynich Manuscript" is a proper noun. PRIIS 20:35, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  What's the most common style used in the literature on the VM? — Matt 00:02, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Seems to be fairly evenly split. Scientific American, inexplicably, uses V. m. There's actually a subtle semantic distinction, whether "manuscript" is being used as a common noun or as part of a proper noun. Seems to me that here it's being used here as part of a proper noun (as, for example "Mississippi River"--even the most hardcore "down stylist" would never write "Mississippi river"). PRIIS 04:33, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text:  The V. m. seems plausible to me, because I would take this to be an as-yet-unnamed manuscript.  So rather than being titled "Voynich Manuscript" as a proper noun, it's being referred to descriptively as "Voynich's manuscript".  Omitting the possessive on such constructs is fairly common in academic fields; for example, see the Bose-Einstein condensate, also with the second word in lowercase. --Delirium 08:45, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  By popular usage over the years the name 'Voynich Manuscript' has come to apply. The usage is the same as the Rosetta Stone or any one of the documents listed on the Codex page, where the document has usually been named after its discoverer or place of discovery, regardless of its content. I agree with Stolfi that the name should be reverted. -- Stackers 18:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manuscript or manuscript? 

message: Baresch apparently was just as puzzled as we are today about this "Sphynx" that had been "taking up space uselessly in his library" for many years.
Where is this quote from?--Iustinus 09:28, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It's from a letter from Baresch to Athanasius Kircher, transcribed here. PRIIS 03:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted. --68.79.55.15 04:22, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Sphynx" Quote 

message: The earliest confirmed owner of the manuscript was a certain Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist who lived in Prague in the early 17th century.
What about the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II? See e.g.  --Susurrus 12:46, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rudolph II 

message: I wonder if it could be a cipher, which processes each word as separate text.
To illustrate, consider a simple Vigenere cipher with keyword "LEMON", applied to English. A plaintext:
How much wood would the woodchuck chuck, if the woodchuck would chuck wood?
would produce ciphertext:
Ssi ahnl icbo aaiyo xts jzspqufgw qufgw, ws elq kbzhovhno ichwh ovhno icbo?
This cipher essentially destroyed the letter frequency and the Zipf's law. But it would not, if each word was encoded separately, i.e. seek always was reset to "L" at start of each word. Therefore we get:
Ssi xyov hsar hsgzq elq hsarpsyoy nlgqx, tj elq hsarpsyoy hsgzq nlgqx hsar?
Note that every occurence of a word of plaintext is mapped always to the same sequence in ciphertext, i.e. "wood" always becomes "hsar". In this case, Zipf's law is untouched.
Of course, I don't want to suggest that VMs is encrypted in Vigenere applied to each word separately - that was only an illustration. Rather, I consider some cipher which is essentially a revesible function, that maps a word into a sequence of characters, not necessarily the same length.
A Codebook cipher was suggested, and was countered that "book-based ciphers are viable only for short messages, because they are very cumbersome to write and to read". Note that a codebook is such a reversible function, that maps words into sequences of chars which denote their position in a book, but, I must admit, cumbersome to perform.
However, instead of looking up in the codebook, the plaintext words could be "calculated" into ciphertext words by some reversible, mathematical function.
Briefly, it would be some hybrid of a letter-based cipher and word-based code.
Going further, we can also consider some variants:
* this mapping could be not entirely reversible (i.e. some different plaintext word become equal ciphertext sequences) and it's up to reader to choose which interpretation lays in context. If, for example, brother produces the same sequence as larch, and we meet this sequence in certain context, we read "My brother went to school" rather than "My larch went to school". Analogical problem affects homograms and homophones in natural languages; their meaning depends on context. And dropping the vowels before encoding has similar efect.
* one word can produce more than one sequence, and vice versa.
--Grzes 22:12, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  maybe a cipher applied to each word separately than to the whole text? 

message: This is a great article on a fascinating subject, but there are many internal links that aren't really necessary.
The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book of unknown contents, written some 600 years ago by an anonymous author in an unidentified alphabet and unintelligible language.
Are readers of this article really likely to want to read an entry on "book"? IMO these are trivial topics and the html link is distracting to the eye. Something like Zipf's law, on the other hand, seems entirely appropriate for an internal link, as this is a related topic which the curious reader would likely want to explore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.163.110.72 (talk • contribs) 15:06, 26 August 2005
: Yeah, you're right, there does seem to be some over-"wikification". We should't be linking common-or-garden words; feel free to dive in and unlink them! — Matt Crypto 15:57, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  distracting internal links 

message: Is the link to Anthony Ascham correct?  Presumably not as the diplomat's dates (c.1614-1650) do not match with the 1550 publication date of the A Little Herbal.  Does anyone know enough to disambiguate these Ascham chaps? — Stumps 06:08, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anthony Ascham(s) 

message: Is there any dominant viewpoint today among people who have studied it about what the VM is? The article doesn't seem to indicate this, but I was wondering. Everyking 00:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been a year since I last checked the mailing list, but I would say that there is still no dominant viewpoint. Until 5-6 years ago the majority of the people working on it assumed that it was some sort of cipher. As of last year, there seemed to be a substantial faction who thought it was a hoax, and a few who held other theories. But that is just an impression, not the result of any poll.Jorge Stolfi 18:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dominant viewpoint 

message: How do they know the author remained anonymous if the text is indecipherable? - Cobra Ky  (talk, contribs) 05:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if he gave away his identity in his writings, he sure as heck did it in a strange way... =S 惑乱 分からん 17:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How do they know the author remained anonymous? 

message: Has anyone seen the page at http://www.edithsherwood.com/ ? The page by Edith Sherwood Ph. D (I don't know who that is...) gives some pointers about the origin of the Voynich manuscript. Please comment on this and may be we can add it to the article... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Syleshkumar (talk • contribs) 15:18, 30 April 2006
: Don't follow tha above link. You'll get a Trojan.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.11.137 (talk • contribs) 15:19, 17 May 2006
::I've disabled the html link just in case. The above two comments were made by single-edit users. -Wikianon 07:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Tres lame. Re-enabled, perfectly valid source. Chris Cunningham 13:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  da Vinci connection 

message: The article says a "photostatic reproduction" of the first page was made by Voynich at or before 1921.  Curous about the method used, I clicked the link on "photostatic" which went to Photocopying.  But that article says that electrostatic copying was not invented until 1937, and not pratically developed unil 1947.  So, is this wrong?  Was some other method used?  If so, what? Pimlottc 19:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1921 photostatic reproduction