>> The ‘grid’ aligns with the characters along the left side. The right side characters align (or seem to) mostly with each other.
Characters produced by typewriters align vertically in columns. How could a typewriter have produced “None” in box 17a not vertically aligned with “August” in box 5a?
What explanation do you offer to explain the anomalous alignment?
Obviously, it’s a result of the Xerox patented mixed raster compression algorithm, designed by a brilliant Brazilian engineer.
Well?
The last typewriter I owned had a way to release the carriage so you could align things. I don’t think that lack of vertical alignment on those fields means anything.
What explanation do you offer to explain the anomalous alignment?
There are a number of possible explanations:
1. The document wasn't typed in one continuous sequence, i.e., the clerk may have completed portions of the document based on information at hand, while awaiting some item to be completed (e.g., the child's name isn't often decided immediately, information about the father could be pending, etc.) So if the document were taken out and reinserted a second time into a typewriter, the characters are unlikely to align in the way you're demanding.
2. It's possible to type a form with the paper release not secured, which allows the paper or form to move easily. If that were the case at some point during the document's completion, slight discrepancies in alignment could occur.
3. There may be some distortion caused in the copying/scanning process. As I noted in my prior post, the Zatkovich analysis treats this as mostly like true scan of a hardcopy document with some "enhancements to legibility" made. Is it possible that during some post-scan "clean up" process that some slight alignment distortions were created? It seems so. I've not seen an argument by you our any one that precludes that possibility.
But there are things that you need to explain as well, as I noted in my prior post. If this document wasn't composed on a typewriter, but is a purely computer-generated electronic file (as some claim), then how is it that the image shows curvature along the left margin in the way one would observe copying a hardcopy document from a bound volume? How is it that the characters along the left side of the document DO align (which is remarkable, if the computer user is supposedly not aware a typewritten document would need to show that).
So what say you?