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A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot from 1988

• ablanton 6mo ago
  I love Chris Markers work so much, this essay is mind blowing. I had no idea he knew how to program or created a second life
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• slim 6mo ago
  surprisingly technical and informative if you read through it
• jimmydoe 6mo ago
  Chris Marker wrote code?! Mind blowing. God knows what would happen if he lives in this age.
• mrwh 6mo ago
  Good article! Am I right that chrismarker.org used to host the early, but it's since lapsed?
• applicative 6mo ago
  It's strange the article quotes so much from it, but doesn't link the BASIC source itself
  • kosmavision 6mo ago
    It's squirreled away on Disquette 003 on the Poptronics Dialector site: https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquette003.html https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquet...
    • applicative 6mo ago
      Haha, thanks. I am amusing myself trying to get claude to figure out what I need to reproduce it, and how to use the emulator at https://dialector.poptronics.fr/ https://dialector.poptronics.fr/ partly to reveal some of the elements outside the program, e.g. KAT OWL FACE images
      • ravi_nandan 6mo ago
        Also trying to run this on actual Apple IIe. Have the BASIC but stuck on the same problem. Binary files OWL, KAT, FACE, all of that. Using Claude too to help. Have emailed the Poptronics team too but wondering if anyone here has come across them.
        • durakot 6mo ago
          I think it's Beagle Basic, too: http://www.apple-iigs.info/doc/fichiers/BeagleBasic.pdf http://www.apple-iigs.info/doc/fichiers/BeagleBasic.pdf
        • stfnkbck 6mo ago
          Author here. Funny who you can run into on HN. Anyway, worthy project. These images: https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquette004.html https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquet... Plus this converter: https://github.com/KrisKennaway/ii-pix https://github.com/KrisKennaway/ii-pix ...should get you closer. You'll still be missing a few files though, the full listing of the original disk contents (all the images, etc) is here: https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquette002.html https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquet... And yeah, as durakot pointed out it's Beagle Basic.
          • ravi_nandan 6mo ago
            Amazing - thank you for stopping by too. Super helpful. Will come back with anything else that I find too. Fun project.
  • kmoser 6mo ago
    It does: > At the risk of getting a bit esoteric, I want to spend a moment with the actual source code to Dialector [...]
    • applicative 6mo ago
      He makes many quotations, but doesn't give the (reconstructed) source. The quotations made me want to see the rest. As kosmavision points out it's visible at https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquette003.html https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquet... The emulator at https://dialector.poptronics.fr/ https://dialector.poptronics.fr/ prints a sort of trace on the right hand side, which was helpful as I was asking claude what was going on.