When I started my web site, way back in the previous century (so to speak), the primary aim was to collect and summarise all text analyses of the MS and, by the way, provide an up-to-date account of the MS similar to D'Imperio's work.

As it turned out, I became more interested in the MS history than the text analysis, and the emphasis shifted in that direction.

At the same time, I was frustrated when trying to write the text analysis part of the site, because most of the really obvious questions could not be answered:
- how many characters or words are in the MS?
- what is the character frequency distribution?
Lots of partial answers (also in D'Imperio) but nothing comprehensive.

All of this could be done with a good, complete transcription of the MS. There are several transcriptions that are more-or-less complete. However, they all follow quite different conventions. I have long worked with my own complete (as I thought) transcription, and tools written on the basis of its format.

In order to bring in some standards and to improve collaboration, I have designed a new transcription file format that allows the representation of all existing publicly available transcription files, in their own original transcription alphabet.
They have all been converted to this new format.

There is a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. at my web site , which also includes my own transcription made in 1999, on the basis of the material available at that time.
 
I also converted my own command-line tool for processing transcription files to support this format.
Details are You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

I will use these files for all future work, but I also believe that they invite collaboration.
There is a great opportunity for people to write more clever tools than my "ivtt", based on this new format.
Once there are standard formats, tools can be made that can be used by everybody.

It is now also possible for anyone presenting text analyses to state exactly on which (part of the) text it was based, allowing others to repeat and verify these analyses.

The Veronese riddle (Italian: Indovinello Veronose) is a short marginal text dating to the 8th or early 9th century. Scholars variously consider this to be very corrupted Latin or one of the earliest texts written in Italian vulgar.

The riddle is quite fun (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
Voynich-wise, it's interesting that the riddle is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

I found the script (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) impossible to read and interesting in itself. I attach three words from the short invocation that follows the riddle.
Gratias tibi agimus (we thank you)


PS: Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can be seen online.

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This thread is to keep at a single place results of plant identification work based on image mnemonics approach. Each ID should be discussed in a dedicated thread in the "Imagery" subforum; please limit discussion in this thread to the aggregation issues solely.

For the initial posting, I gathered results that I have documented in my offline notes. They may be some IDs suggested shortly before the
"Coventry event" that I have not noted down, I will scroll through the threads and include them here. Also, the table will be updated as new ID's are proposed and discussed to the satisfactory degree of consensus. The table includes only positions that are not excessively vague or controversial: namely, mnemonic proposals should be well explained and correlating with the plant name and/or usage, and the plant image should be, mnemonic-bearing portions excluded, representative of the actual ID proposed.

LEGEND:

Mnemonics codes: N means "name", U means "usage", R means "reference" (to myths, ancient sources etc.) "Tops" means flowers, stem, leaves collectively.  
References: "Pritzel" means Die Deutschen Volksnamen der Pflanzen by G. Pritzel and G. Jessen. "Pliny" means Natural History by Pliny the Elder. More references will be added as appropriate.
ID authorship: "Finnish biologist" means anonymous Finnish biologist on Stephen Bax's website: stephenbax.net. Other names and aliases are self-explanatory.

David and I are serious about turning the interviews into a series, and the next person we'll have a chat with is Stephen Bax. 
It would be great if we could get some questions from the forum community to include in the interview. So don't hesitate to propose any questions in this thread!

The times does a crossword puzzle in Latin. Thought it might be fun to put it here to see if anyone is interested - if they are, let me know and I'll put more up.

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  crossword-20170826-24951.pdf (Size: 104.77 KB / Downloads: 697)

My name is Tom,

I wish to ask the team if you can give me just 1 more chance.  I promise to work in a civil fashion and I like you all here and I want to be friends.  I feel rotten about my behavior.  I recently had manic-episode since the completion of my last book from May until getting home today.  Mental hospitals I have been dealing with since I was 18.

I gave myself compliments as Saturn and went off on a couple users through frustration as coded, but yes I was mentally ill at the time.  I want to put forth new Ideas, but I will not steer away from Latin.

I have new and fresh ideas on how to approach the VMS and I think it's a floating cipher. My meaning is let's look at one glyph like voynich, "o" and it could be referred to as several Latin letters but only if it meets a criteria as in a word count.  I will show you a 4 layered approach from modulo, fractions, factoring and matrices.

I will elaborate more regarding this and I did leave out my book, because of unfounded voices.

Please guys let me in just one more time so I can put forth this discussion and bounce it off you voynich intellects.

Best regards Tom.

I used to refer to Steve D's website: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  for his plant ID's, but now it seems to be down, and some advertising stuff is there instead.

To refresh a bit neglected "plant mnemonics" discourse, I'd like to propose to try to identify the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant.

In fact, when Helmut and Marco were discussing the "mallier" marginalia in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread, Marco mentioned that the luc'z abbreviation could stand for the accusative "lucem" which also means "eyesight", and which corresponds to the "eyes" depicted in the roots of the plant.

This just triggered my memory of the plant, and the only line that I remember of Miechowsky "Conservatio sanitatis": "miraculus in reparatione visus", which is said of Euphrasia. Now, Pritzel lists quite a number of folk names of Euprasia that feature components such as "Augen-" or "Licht-", such as "Augenkraut".

It has been mentioned recently in the forum that Pritzel is not very reliable source, but this is not the case where we should be on guard, because e.g. in Russian Euphrasia is called "Очанка" which derives from (now quite obsolete) "Очи" (= Eyes).

Although some of Euphrasia have violet flowers, neither the leaves nor the flowers of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. look very much like Euphrasia. So my suggestion would be to develop the eyes mnemonics further and to:

- look what other plants are recommended to improve eyesight or cure eye diseases (my №1 suggestion for the roots mnemonics)
- look what oher plant names may refer to eyes (my №2 suggestion for the roots mnemonics)
- discuss what the leaves mnemonics for this plant can be and how this could correlate to the eyes mnemonics of the roots.

Having compared the various available transcription files with each other and with the image of the MS, I've been able to make an inventory of all text in Voynichese writing.

Of course this means all text that we know of today.

It may be of interest to point to some of the more elusive pieces of text, which come in various forms.

For one, there is a pair of characters in plain sight, that has been completely ignored by all transcribers.
This is a pair of characters in the left margin of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that seems to read dd

It could of course also be (Roman) 88, but since the line includes a rare word with this character pair, it very much looks like a reference to this, perhaps made by a later owner (?). By itself an interesting question.

Another elusive piece of text that was not captured by anyone (even Th.Petersen) is a word or two in the Voynich script that is part of the top margin of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Everyone can be excused for this, since it is only visible under UV illumination.

Then there is a word in the upper left corner of the Rosettes page. Th.Petersen saw it and transcribed it. He wrote in his letters that for particularly difficult items, he consulted the original MS. It is missing in all transcription files except the one made by Gabriel and myself, since we used Th.Petersen's hand transcription.

One label that I had started to believe was imaginary, until two days ago, is on f102v1, on the bottom container.
This may be an interesting challenge for people to figure out.
Th.Petersen had it, and GC included it in his transcription, but it is missing in the interlinear file.

Finally, there is one that is so elusive, that I haven't been able to find it. It is mentioned in the interlinear file.
It should be on f101v2 on the third row, between the container and the first plant part and is transcribed as **l** .
Perhaps the description is wrong, and any suggestions would be appreciated.

Why has most everyone ignored this fellow O'Neil when it looks as though he is on target?

I have read O'Neil's book regarding the, "House of Este's", involvement with the VMS.  What really stands out for me is this image that I retrieved from Dr. Bax's site as the attachment of constellations and Jupiter Rising.  O'Neil really digs deep here I believe he has decoded part of  folio f71r, but not all of it.

What I also found he is selling other books.  I would just chalk this up to his quest for finding out what he has contributed in his final book.  And the ciphers which he has put together in this quest might be what the NSA deem special.  O'Neil does put forth LATIN as the language for the VMS and it is a full color read and extremely interesting.

I'm an editor for Scientific American, what positive accolades would you give Mr. O'Neil for his final work, which he apparently shared here for a little while?

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