I thought trying to make Babble work under Windows 10 would be a chore,
but it turned out to be much easier than writing a fresh implementation,
though I might still do that.



I downloaded the program from archive.org
<https://archive.org/details/Babble_1020>and it ran first time in DosBox
<https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1>, without any tinkering.
Getting a grip on its idiosyncratic interface brought on a wave of
nostalgia. I was reminded that in a character-based program, it was
important to get every bit of functionality onto one screen, because any
pop-up dialogue more complex than a yes-no question was way too much
effort, and something like a SaveAs... file dialogue was out of the
question.

Babble! 2.0 appeared in 1991 and got a huge boost from computer magazine
reviews. Korenthal Associates specialized in language-related
applications (a spell checker, a synonym finder, etc) and this was the
last application from that stable that I've been able to find. I doubt
very much if shareware sales ever funded anyone’s early retirement (mine
certainly didn’t), but it would be nice to think this one did.


Paul Keating wrote on 2022-07-16 18:22:
> At the time I still had a working copy of Babble. Of course, even if I
> still had it, it would not run without a DOS emulator. But rather than
> try to make that work, it would probably be more fun to recreate the
> program using modern ML techniques. I was playing with that idea just
> last week.
>
> 'France International/Mike Shefler' via Dixonary wrote on 2022-07-12
> 17:26:
>> IIRC I think I created the longest def using the
>> stream-of-consciousness program /babble/. I can't find the def and I
>> don't remember the round, though. As I recall, it did not win the round.
>>
>> --Mike

--
Paul Keating
Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

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