if 0 {

[Brian Theado] - 21Oct03
I have been reading Win Wenger's fascinating ''Einstein Factor'' [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076150186X/qid=1066784962].  This book is full of fascinating creativity and problem solving techniques.  The author's website (http://winwenger.com) contains dozens and dozens of articles about topics similar that found in the ''Einstein Factor'' (http://winwenger.com/winsight.htm is a good starting point).  One article [http://www.winwenger.com/part27.htm] gives details for a Babble-Back Machine in which two reel-to-reel tape recorders are rigged together to record and then play back the same sound with a few seconds delay.  Read http://www.winwenger.com/feed1.htm for more details on learning from feedback from your own output.

I decided the power of the [snack] sound extension would make implementing a similar device in Tcl easy.  Below is the resulting code.  It plays back all sound received on a computer's microphone with a 2 second delay.  The delay can be changed to 1 second (for example) by hitting F2 to bring up the console and typing 'set delay 1000'.  The units for the delay variable is in microseconds.

I introduced this program to my 2 year old daughter and she is utterly thrilled with it.  She laughed, squealed, talked and babbled for over an hour and a half and still wanted more.

I have packaged this code along with snack together into a Windows starpack at http://tkoutline.sourceforge.net/babbleback.exe.
}
 package require Tk
 package require sound
 proc play s {
    $s stop
    $s play -command "$s destroy"
    record
 }
 proc record {} {
    set s [snack::sound]
    $s record
    after $::delay "play $s"
    }
 proc createGui {} {
    wm title . "The Babbleback Machine"
    pack [label .label -text "Speak into the microphone"]
    pack [button .exit -text Exit -command exit] -fill both
    bind . <F2> "console show"
 }
 set delay 2000
 if {$argc == 1} {set delay [lindex $argv 0]}
 createGui
 record