literature review

• Is the VMS really "encoded"?

• Why has the VMS not been "decrypted" yet?

• What progress in deciphering it has been made so far?

• If the VMS is written an unknown "language" it would be a great opportunity to "solve" it if there would be a clear context between a piece of text and a picture explaining its meaning. Is there existing a list of labels combined with the pictures nearby?

• What kind of analysis have been made on the VMS?

• review of books and articles in the internet

• chronological listing of decyphering attempts, progress in research and sources of basic knowledge

• structuring the material

• creating a website with the material for documentation and to share the work

• The first negative photostatic copies of the whole VMS were made by W. Voynich himself in 1919 [D'IMPERIO (1918) p.39], but only a few of these photostatic images were depicted in early books about the VMS as illsutrations. There have been b/w illustrations of some folios of the VMS pictured in KENT (1921) [REEDS (2001)] and NEWBOLD (1928). In 1931 Father Petersen made positive photostatic copies of 122 negative photostatic copies provided by Ethel Voynich [D'IMPERIO (1918) p.39]. 1931, in the same year, John Manly donated a positive photostatic copy of the VMS to the British library, but they lost it until 1947 [BAEZ (1992)]. The first color ilustrations have been pictured in SMYTH (1992) [REEDS (2001)]. Most of the photostatic images were in private hands and not public available until 2004 when the first digital color images of the VMS where public accessible via the internet site of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, followed by the publication of high resolution digital color images in 2014.

• Most used for statistical analyses of the VMS is the transcription by TAKAHASHI (1998-11-25) contained in the EVA Interlinear File (v1.6e6) which was created by REEDS, LANDINI & STOLFI (1998-12-29) and consists of historical (punchcard) transcriptions by William F. Friedman (1945), Mary D'Imperio (1976), Prescott H. Currier (1976) and others, re-typed and edited by Jim Reeds, Jim Guillogly and Jacques Guy [REEDS, LANDINI & STOLFI (1998-12-29), STOLFI (1998-12-29)].

Not public available and not included in the EVA Interlinear File (v1.6e6) are the transcriptions by Jeffrey R. Krischer (1969), William R. Bennett (1976) and Timothy Rayel (a.k.a. Glen Claston) (year unknown).

• Most effort has been done on statistical analysis to break into the VMS script, but not succesfully yet. It has already been stated quite early by CURRIER (1976) that the VMS script is showing at least two hands (since then called CURRIER A and CURRIER B) and two kind of languages. This has already been proofen very early by D'IMPERIO (1978a, 1979) but her research and results were not known until the FOIA in 2009. 

Even before the EVA Interlinear File (v1.6e6) has been published in 1998 a great deal of analytical effort has been dedicated to show that the statistical behaviour of the VMS script is comparable to naturall languages [GUY (1991, 1991a, 1991b, 1997), STALLINGS (1998), LANDINI (2001), SUZEK & HAJIK (2001), JASKIEWICZ (2011), KNIGHT & REDDY (2011), AMANCIO et al. (2013), ROUSH & SHI (2014) and others]. 

But not much effort was dedicated to define the cause of the statistical behaviour of the VMS script, to specify the differences between the languages exactly [GOSLEE (2006), ZANDBERGEN (2011, 2014) and in parts others]. 

• There is only existing a listing of labels and a description of the pictures nearby [STOLFI (1997, 1998)].

• Today modern research could refer to high resolution digital images and private individuals are enabled to run their own computer aided statistical analysis using several full transcriptions of the VMS in multiple transcription alphabets - a state early serious researchers around 1970 could only have dreamed of.

• It seems TAKAHASHI had only black and white photocopies of the VMS to rely on for his transcription in 1998. 

• The specifity of the VMS script languages are still undefined. To quote ZANDBERGEN (2014-08-02): "The most important conclusion [sic] [...] is, that there is a clear correlation between the text and the illustration on each page in the MS. This is, because the location of any symbol depends only on the text, while the colour depends only on the illustration (with the important exception that the herbal pages have been split into two, based on the already known differences in text statistics). The different colours are clearly concentrated in different areas. This does not demonstrate that the text is meaningful, or that the text variations are caused by different subject matter (as suggested in 2012 by Montemurro). If that were the case, the difference between herbal A and herbal B should not exist. The cause of the (statistical) language variation is still unexplained." 

"When Currier identified his languages A and B, he did this on the basis of the different statistics of the initial herbal pages in the MS, which are identified by the red ('A') and dark blue ('B') crosses. It is clear that these have distinct properties - the clouds do not overlap. He also checked the other pages, and noted more variations, but his criteria for distinguishing the languages did not allow him to see that the overall statistics demonstrate that there is a continuum, and the other (not herbal) pages actually 'bridge the gap'."

"The language usage depends on whether the bifolio on which it is written has a standard size or has additional folds. The 'bridging' between the two languages A and B is located exclusively on the foldout pages. This is an important feature that equally still lacks an explanation, but which almost certainly must be related to the order in which the MS has been created."

• It will be of importance to specifiy the differences between the languages and then get insight into the cause of the statistical behaviour of the VMS script.

• Beinecke MS 408.Cipher manuscript (Voynich manuscript). General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597
• AMANCIO, ALTMANN, RYBSKI, OLIVEIRA & COSTA (2013) Probing the Statistical Properties of Unknown Texts: Application to the Voynich Manuscript.http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0067310&representation=PDF
• BAEZ (1992) Voynich Bibliography. http://voynich.net/reeds/gillogly/biblio
• CURRIER (1976) Papers on the Voynich Manuscript.in: D'IMPERIO Mary E. [editor] (1976) New Research on the Voynich Manuscript. Proceedings of a Seminar. Washington, D.C., 30 November 1976. Transcription of Jacques Guy and Jim Reeds, January 1992. http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/mirror/reeds/currier/p.ps/
• D'IMPERIO(1978)The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma. Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. National Security Agency (NSA).https://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/publications/misc/voynich_manuscript.pdf
• D'IMPERIO (1978a) An Application of Cluster Analysis to the Question of 'Hands' and 'Languages' in the Voynich Manuscript. PI Informal No. 3, (June 1978, S-216,867) and NSA Technical Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 3 (Summer 1978), pp. 59-75. Released by NSA on 23 April 2002 pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/Application_of_Cluster_Analysis.pdf
• D'IMPERIO (1979) An Application of PTAH to the Voynich Manuscript.p. 65-92. NSA Technical Journal Vol. XXIV, No.2, Spring 1979. Released by NSA on 06 March 2009 pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/application_of_ptah.pdf
• GOSLEE [sarahgoslee.com] (2006) Basic Analyses.
• GUY (1991) Statistical Properties of Two Folios of the Voynich Manuscript. Cryptologia, XV, Issue 4, pp. 207-218
• GUY (1991a) Letter to the Editor Re Voynich Manuscript.Cryptologia, XV, Issue 3, pp. 161-166
• GUY (1991b) Vowel Identification: an old (but good) algorithm. Cryptologia, Vol. XV, Nr. 3, July 1991, p. 258-262 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/guySukhotin.pdfjaques
• GUY (1997) The distribution of signs c and o in the voynich manuscript: Evidence for a real language?Cryptologia, Vol. 21, Issue 1, 1997
• JASKIEWICZ (2011) Analysis of Letter Frequency Distribution in the Voynich Manuscript.Proceedings of the International Workshop CS&P, September 28-30 2011, Pultusk, Poland, p.250-261 http://csp2011.mimuw.edu.pl/proceedings/PDF/CSP2011250.pdf
• KENT (1921)Deciphers Roger Bacon Manuscripts. Pennsylvania Gazette. 19 (May 27, 1921) pp.851-853
• KNIGHT & REDDY (2011) What We Know About the Voynich Manuscript. Proceedings of the 5th ACL-HLT Workshop on Language Technology for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, and Humanities, pages 78–86, Portland, OR, USA, 24 June 2011. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W11/W11-1511.pdf
• LANDINI (2001) Evidence of linguistic structure in the Voynich Manuscript using spectral analysis. Cryptologia.
• NEWBOLD (1928) The Cipher of Roger Bacon. Edited with foreword and notes by Roland Grubb Kent. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, London
• REEDS (2001) Voynich Manuscript Bibliography. 
• REEDS, LANDINI & STOLFI (1998-12-29) EVA Interlinear File (v1.6e6)
• ROUSH & SHI [eleceng.adelaide.edu.au] (2014) Semester B Final Report 2014 - Cracking the Voynich code.
• STALLINGS [geocities.com] (1998) Second-Order Entropies of Voynich Texts.
• STOLFI [ic.unicamp.br] (1997-10-23) Label reference maps
• STOLFI [ic.unicamp.br] (1998-07-20) Lots of labels - Main page
• STOLFI [ic.unicamp.br] (1998-12-29)Reeds and Landini's interlinear file converted to EVA.
• STEINDL & SULZER (2009) Das Voynich-Rätsel. Die geheimnisvollste Handschrift der Welt. ORF
• SUZEK & HAJIC [cs.jhu.edu] (2001) Statistical experiments.
• ZANDBERGEN [voynich.nu] (2011-02-26) From digraph entropy to word entropy in the Voynich MS.
• ZANDBERGEN [voynich.nu] (2011-02-26a) Currier A and B / two different languages?
• ZANDBERGEN [voynich.nu] (2014-08-02) The Currier languages revisited.