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

Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by applicative on Sunday March 15, 2026 @04:34PM (#47391589)

It's strange the article quotes so much from it, but doesn't link the BASIC source itself

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by kosmavision on Sunday March 15, 2026 @05:04PM (#47391891)

It's squirreled away on Disquette 003 on the Poptronics Dialector site: https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquet...

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by applicative on Sunday March 15, 2026 @06:41PM (#47392776)

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/ partly to reveal some of the elements outside the program, e.g. KAT OWL FACE images

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by ravi_nandan on Tuesday March 17, 2026 @04:58PM (#47418212)

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.

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by durakot on Tuesday March 17, 2026 @10:52PM (#47421075)

I think it's Beagle Basic, too: http://www.apple-iigs.info/doc/fichiers/BeagleBasic.pdf

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by stfnkbck on Wednesday March 18, 2026 @12:31AM (#47421605)

Author here. Funny who you can run into on HN. Anyway, worthy project.

These images: https://dialector.poptronics.fr/dialector_documents/ADisquet...

Plus this converter: 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/ADisquet...

And yeah, as durakot pointed out it's Beagle Basic.

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by ravi_nandan on Wednesday March 18, 2026 @10:01AM (#47425924)

Amazing - thank you for stopping by too. Super helpful. Will come back with anything else that I find too. Fun project.

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by kmoser on Monday March 16, 2026 @01:40AM (#47395517)

It does:

> At the risk of getting a bit esoteric, I want to spend a moment with the actual source code to Dialector [...]

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Re:A look inside Dialector, filmmaker Chris Marker's chatbot... by applicative on Monday March 16, 2026 @10:37PM (#47407901)

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/ADisquet... The emulator at 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.

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