crypto-theorising... :)

by my friend with the breath that stings the eyes...
to decrypt a message, one (well, probably more like a team) will probably start by trying to match the frequency of certain characters in the encoded message to the average frequency of characters in any other type of writing. there's also the frequency of 1,2,3, etc letter words, and really how many are there? unless u went and had ppl trying to send a message resort to only a somewhat limited vocabulary, and have a number represent each word. and these numbers could be written down using some obscure numbering system, like based on 17's or something. hehe, like hexa-decimal+1 :D the language used by the encoder would have to be considered. i wonder how much a message in say, french, sent from an english speaking operative to another would confuse things for someone trying to decrypt it. is this something usually suspected, or at least usu taken into consideration, by the decryptor? so there's the question of language. then perhaps the question of content subject - probably different frequencies of letters tend to occur in messages regarding different subjects. or maybe not..? then there's languages like chinese or other such non-alfabetical script. there could be a system of a character representing words, or just syllables. perhaps even a character could be used instead of writing out a very often used sentence. i wonder if for codes that simply exchange character for character, if there is usually a general "formula" that one could apply to be able to change back every character in a message coded in a such a way. that would be pretty complicated to try and decipher. or to make up. then messages could perhaps be written on a computer and a coding computer program could for example save a text or even pic message as pic of a sheet of paper with the message written on it. then it could be transmitted out - the enemy wounldt know what they'd be looking at - they'd be looking for a meassage when they should be trying to put together a picture, and THEN try to decipher whats written on it. but that's complicated and i wonder if it wouldnt require too much computing power and time for an in-the-field operative. hehe - this picture idea reminds me of johny mnemonic :) it might be cool to be a cryptographer :)