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I'm not sure how a photo-print of the manuscript will help cryptographers. Doesn't the digital version available at archive.org provide better opportunities for

I'm not sure how a photo-print of the manuscript will help cryptographers. Doesn't the digital version available at archive.org provide better opportunities for analysis? https://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript https://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript For example, a friend of mine is fascinated with the Zodiac Killer's unsolved ciphers, so he put the note into a program, where you can replace the cryptic symbols in the serial killer's note with various letters: http://www.oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/ http://www.oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/ A printed-book of the Voynich Manuscript--to my mind--actually reduces the ability of cryptographers to decode it (if there's even anything there to actually decode[1]). I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence. [1] An analysis of the manuscript found the distribution of words " is not compatible with natural languages": https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07435 https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07435

dagw 10y ago
A printed-book of the Voynich Manuscript--to my mind--actually reduces the ability of cryptographers to decode it Only if you assume that choice of layout, spacing, character size, colors, relative positioning of text and illustrations etc. etc. aren't an integral part of the whole message.
codingdave 10y ago
> I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence. Odds are, if there was a 1-to-1 relationship between symbols and letters, someone would have figured it out by now. So a font may be statistically interesting, but probably not a major tool towards solving the puzzle.
- reitoei 10y ago
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coldpie 10y ago
> I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence. It's been done: http://www.voynich.nu/analysis.html http://www.voynich.nu/analysis.html

dagw 10y ago

A printed-book of the Voynich Manuscript--to my mind--actually reduces the ability of cryptographers to decode it Only if you assume that choice of layout, spacing, character size, colors, relative positioning of text and illustrations etc. etc. aren't an integral part of the whole message.

codingdave 10y ago

> I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence. Odds are, if there was a 1-to-1 relationship between symbols and letters, someone would have figured it out by now. So a font may be statistically interesting, but probably not a major tool towards solving the puzzle.

reitoei 10y ago
Username checks out

coldpie 10y ago