panel: one of the sections of a folio delimited by physical edges of the parch, folds, or the binding.
page: One or more adjacent panels that function as a single page, with text and/or drawings running across the panel boundaries. In the SPS, each page spans a single panel, so the two terms are basically synonymous.
parag: short for paragraph;
locus: a unit of Voynichese text, such as a line in a parag, a text ring, a label, a title, etc.
locator or locus ID: a pair <page f-number.line number>, like <f108r.07>, that identifies a locus in a transcription file. Note that Rene uses "locator" with a different meaning (an indication of the relative position of the locus in a group of loci).
head of a parag: its first line.
tail of a parag: its last line
puff: a one-legged gallows, either {p} or {f}, with or without the platform slash. (In the ';U' subset of the transcription file, the hooked variants of {p} and {f} are denoted {w} and {z}, respectively.)
puffed line: a line containing one or more puffs.
pufftial: an occurrence of any of the glyphs {p}, {f}, or {t} at the start of a text line.
margin: the mostly text-free space between an edge of the page and the text.
left rail: the ideal line, mostly vertical and straight, that runs just to the left of the majority of lines of a page, separating the left margin from the text.
right rail: the ideal line, mostly vertical and possibly wavy but reasonably smooth, that runs just to the right of the ends of most lines of a page, separating the text from the right margin.
long line: a text line that starts at the left rail ends at or beyond the right rail.
short line: a text line that starts at the left rail but ends well before the right rail.
baseline: the ideal line., usually smooth and somewhat curved, that runs just below the glyphs of a text line, cutting off the tails of {y}, {m}, {l}. etc..
linegap: the vertical distance between baselines of successive lines; which often varies over the width of the text.
wide linegap: a line gap that is wider than normal, at least in some part of the lines (e.g. left side, right side, or middle).
o-height, oht: the height of an EVA {o} in the local handwriting.
topline: an ideal line parallet to the baseline, such that the distance between the two is the o-height.
midline: an ideal line parallel to the baseline and the topline, equidistant from the two.
While the left and right rails are generally smooth curves, they occasionally have abrupt discontinuities. For example, on page f112r, the right rail is indented by ~3 cm in the span from line 2 to line 22, with abrupt transitions at both ends. In that range, it wanders more than usual and it may be uncertain whether a line ends on it or before it. Likewise, on page f112v, the left rail is generally tilted ~4° clockwise from vertical, and has two abrupt discontinuities at lines 11 and 23.
Last edited on 2026-01-12 17:22:02 by stolfi