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GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) was a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. (DRI) for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors. Later versions ran over DOS as well. Image File history File links Gem 1. ...
Image File history File links Gem 1. ...
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The term software company could be applied to; a) a company that produces software or b) a company that distributes software from a third party or c) a company that provides services for software. ...
A software developer is a programmer who is concerned with one or more facets of the software development process, a somewhat broader scope of computer programming. ...
Digital Research, Inc. ...
Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
In computer science, the kernel is the core piece of most operating systems. ...
The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...
A graphical user interface (or GUI, often pronounced gooey) is a method of interacting with a computer through a metaphor of direct manipulation of graphical images and widgets in addition to text. ...
A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ...
The GNU logo Wikisource has original text related to this article: GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ...
A windowing system is a graphical user interface (GUI) which uses the window as one of its primary metaphors. ...
Digital Research, Inc. ...
CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 and Zilog Z80 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ...
An operating system (OS) is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...
An Intel 8088 microprocessor The Intel 8088 is an Intel microprocessor based on the 8086, with 16-bit registers and an 8-bit external data bus. ...
The Motorola 68000 is a 32 bit CISC microprocessor, the first member of a successful family of microprocessors from Motorola, which were all mostly software compatible. ...
Microprocessors, including an Intel 80486DX2 and an Intel 80386. ...
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GEM is known primarily as the graphical user interface (GUI) for the Atari ST series of computers, and somewhat less well known as the operating system for a series of PC-like computers from Amstrad. It was also the core for a small number of DOS programs, the most notable being Ventura Publisher. It was ported to a number of other computers that previously lacked graphical interfaces, but never gained popularity on those platforms. DRI also produced FlexGem for their FlexOS realtime operating system. A graphical user interface (or GUI, often pronounced gooey) is a method of interacting with a computer through a metaphor of direct manipulation of graphical images and widgets in addition to text. ...
The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ...
Amstrad is a manufacturer of electronics based in Brentwood in Essex, England and founded in 1968 by Sir Alan Michael Sugar in the UK. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. ...
Ventura Publisher was the first popular desktop publishing package for IBM PC compatible computers running DOS. The software was originally developed by Ventura Software, a small company founded by John Meyer, Don Heiskel and Lee Jay Lorenzen. ...
An operation within a larger dynamic system is called a real-time operation if the combined reaction- and operation-time of a task is shorter than the maximum delay that is allowed, in view of circumstances outside the operation. ...
History
GSX GEM started life at DRI as a more general purpose graphics library known as GSX (Graphics System eXtension), written by a team led by Lee Lorenzen who had recently left Xerox PARC (birthplace of the GUI). GSX was essentially a DRI-specific implementation of the GKS graphics standard proposed in the late 1970s. GSX was intended to allow DRI to write graphics programs (charting, etc.) for any of the platforms CP/M would run on, a task that would otherwise require considerable effort to port due to the large differences in graphics hardware (and concepts) between the various systems of that era. Bold text // Headline text Link title This article is about the computer research center. ...
The Graphical Kernel System (GKS) was the first ISO standard for low level computer graphics, introduced in 1977. ...
GSX consisted of two parts: a selection of routines for common drawing operations, and the device drivers that are responsible for handling the actual output. The former was known as GDOS and the latter as GIOS, a play on the division of CP/M into machine-independent BDOS and machine-specific BIOS. GDOS was a selection of routines that handled the GKS drawing, while GIOS actually used the underlying hardware to produce the output. Phoenix AwardBIOS on a standard PC BIOS, in computing, stands for Basic Input/Output System or Basic Integrated Operating System. ...
GEM GSX evolved into one part of what would later be known as GEM. Originally to be known as Crystal as a play on an IBM project called Glass, the name was changed to Gem. The use of the acronym evolved later (see backronym). This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
GSX became the GEM VDI, responsible for basic graphics and drawing. VDI also added the ability to work with multiple fonts and added a selection of raster drawing commands to the formerly vector-only GKS-based drawing commands. VDI also added multiple viewports, a key addition for use with windows. A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...
Suppose the smiley face in the top left corner is an RGB bitmap image. ...
Example showing effect of vector graphics on scale: (a) original vector-based illustration; (b) illustration magnified 8x as a vector image; (c) illustration magnified 8x as a raster image. ...
A new module, GEM AES (Application Environment Services), provided the window management and UI elements, and GEM Desktop used both to provide a Mac-like GUI. The 8086 version of the entire system was first demoed at the November 1983 COMDEX, and shipped as GEM/1 on 28 February 1985 [1].
Later versions At this point Apple Computer sued DRI in what would turn into a long dispute over the "look and feel" of the GEM/1 system, which was in fact an almost direct copy of the Macintosh. This eventually led to DRI being forced to change several basic features of the system. While Apple would later go on to sue other companies for similar issues, they lost all such cases in the future. Apple Computer, Inc. ...
The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...
The resulting "lawsuit friendly" GEM/2 allowed the display of only two fixed windows on the "desktop" (other programs could do what they wished however), changed the trash can icon, and removed the animations for things like opening and closing windows. It was otherwise similar to GEM/1, but also included a number of bug fixes and cosmetic improvements.
The last commercial release was GEM/3 which had speed improvements and shipped with a number of basic applications. Commercial sales of GEM ended with GEM/3, the source code was subsequently made available to a number of DRI leading customers.
One-off versions GEM/4 included the ability to work with Bézier curves, a feature still not common outside the PostScript world. The version was produced specifically for Artline a drawing program from CCP. The system also included changes to the font management system, which made it incompatible with the likes of Timeworks Publisher. In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis a Bézier curve is a parametric curve important in computer graphics. ...
PostScript (PS) is a page description language and programming language used primarily in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. ...
Timeworks Publisher was a DTP program produced by GST in the United Kingdom. ...
Another version of GEM called GEM/5 was produced by GST for Timeworks Publisher 2.1. It contained an updated look with 3D buttons, font scaling on the fly was included. It came complete with all the standard 3.1 tools. This version was produced from GEM 3.13 with only the Bezier handling moved taken from GEM 4.
ViewMax At the same time the GEM Desktop itself was spun off as a product known as ViewMAX which was used solely as a file management shell under DR-DOS. In this form the system could not run other GEM programs. This led to the odd situation where you could have a number of applications (including ViewMAX) all with their own copy of the GEM system inside of them, all taking up memory. Of course this was actually rare, as there were not that many GEM programs. ViewMAX is the file manager supplied with DR-DOS versions 5 and 6. ...
DR-DOS is a DOS-family-compatible operating system for IBM PC-compatible personal computers, originally developed by Gary Kildalls Digital Research and derived from CP/M-86. ...
In these forms GEM survived until DRI was purchased by Novell and all GEM development was cancelled. Novell, Inc. ...
Throughout this time DRI had also been working on making the GEM system capable of multitasking. This started with X/GEM based on GEM/1, but this required use of one of the multitasking CP/M based operating systems. GEM/XM was an updated version of GEM/2 which allowed multitasking and the ability to run DOS programs in shell windows (as Windows does today). None of these saw the light of day, but the GEM/XM code is now available in the public domain.
Lee Lorenzen had left soon after the release of GEM/1, when it became clear that DRI had no strong interest in applications development. He then formed his own company with another of the GEM developers, Dan Meyer, and started Ventura Software. They developed Ventura Publisher, which was later marketed by Xerox (and eventually to Corel), which would go on to be a very popular desktop publishing program for some time. Ventura Publisher was the first popular desktop publishing package for IBM PC compatible computers running DOS. The software was originally developed by Ventura Software, a small company founded by John Meyer, Don Heiskel and Lee Jay Lorentzen. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Corel Corporation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ...
Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer, page layout software and a printer to create publications on a small economic scale. ...
Atari versions Atari licensed GEM/1 and CP/M 68k under terms that allowed it to continue development on their own (it appears DRI had no interest on the 68k). The resulting OS was called TOS by Atari, and was the operating system for the Atari ST. For the concept Atari (当ãŸã‚Š) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ...
Atari ST GEM desktop The Operating System (TOS) was the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. ...
The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ...
Since TOS was based on GEM/1 and Atari was never sued directly they did not have to cripple the interface as DRI did. Development of GEM at Atari took it along other paths than the PC versions. By the 1990s GEM included 24-bit color support, configurable window elements, scalable fonts, preemptive multitasking via a kernel based on UNIX, called MiNT (MiNT is Not TOS), and a host of other features. Pre-emptive multitasking is a form of multitasking in which processes are not allowed to take an indefinitely long time to complete execution in the CPU. Each process, in turn, is granted a portion of CPU time (usually called a time slice, on the order of milliseconds). ...
In computer science, the kernel is the core piece of most operating systems. ...
Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
Species See text The true mints (genus Mentha) are perennial herbs in the Family Lamiaceae. ...
Continued development SCO Group have released the source to GEM under the GNU licence and the development of GEM for PC is continued as OpenGEM and FreeGEM. It also has been ported to the Atari ST again to be used in the free TOS clone EmuTOS. The SCO Group, Inc. ...
GNU (pronounced ) is a free software operating system consisting of a kernel, libraries, system tools, compilers and many end-user applications. ...
OpenGEM is a distribution of FreeGEM, a graphical user interface (GUI) for DOS. OpenGEM is a non-multitasking 16bit GUI. OpenGEM is designed to provide commerical quality software for DOS users. ...
FreeGEM is a computer GUI first released in 1985. ...
Atari ST GEM desktop The Operating System (TOS) was the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. ...
EmuTOS is a replacement for TOS (the operating system of the Atari ST and its successors), released as free software. ...
Description The "full" GEM system consisted of three main parts: - GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface)
- GEM AES (Application Environment Services)
- GEM Desktop (an application providing drag-and-drop based file management)
The GEM VDI was the core graphics system of the overall GEM engine. It was responsible for "low level" drawing in the form of "draw line from here to here". VDI included a resolution and coordinate independent set of vector drawing instructions which were called from applications through a fairly simple interface. TVDI also included environment information (state, or context), current color, line thickness, output device, etc.
These commands were then examined by GDOS, whose task it was to send the commands to the proper driver for actual rendering. For instance, if a particular GEM VDI environment was connected to the screen, the VDI instructions were then routed to the screen driver for drawing. Simply changing the environment to point to the printer was all that was needed (in theory) to print, dramatically reducing the developer workload (they formerly had to do printing "by hand" in all applications). GDOS was also responsible for loading up the drivers and any requested fonts when GEM was first loaded.
One major advantage the VDI provided over the Macintosh was the way multiple devices and contexts were handled. In the Mac such information was stored in memory inside the application. This resulted in serious problems when attempting to make the Mac handle pre-emptive multitasking, as the drawing layer (QuickDraw) needed to have direct memory access into all programs. In GEM VDI however, such information was stored in the device itself, with GDOS creating "virtual devices" for every context – each window for instance. This advantage remained largely theoretical however, as the multitasking versions of GEM were never officially released. Two quickdraws. ...
The GEM AES provided the window system, window manager, UI style and other GUI elements (widgets). For performance reasons, many of the GUI widgets were actually drawn using character graphics. Compared to the Macintosh, AES provided a rather spartan look and the system shipped with a single monospaced font.
The AES performs its operations by calling the VDI, but in a more general sense the two parts of GEM were often completely separated in applications. Applications typically called AES commands to set up a new window, with the rest of the application using VDI calls to actually draw into that window.
The GEM Desktop was an application program that used AES to provide a file manager and launcher, the traditional "desktop" environment that users had come to expect from the Macintosh. Unlike the Macintosh, the GEM Desktop was based on top of DOS (MS-DOS or DR DOS+ on the PC, TOS on the Atari), and as a result the actual display was cluttered with computer-like items including path names and wildcards. In general GEM was much more "geeky" than the Mac, but simply running a usable shell on DOS was a huge achievement on its own. Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ...
See also GEOS may be: GEOS (eikaiwa), an Eikaiwa- company specialising in language education (usually English), based mainly in Japan Graphic Environment Operating System, denoting two distinct graphical user interface computer operating systems created by Berkeley Softworks, later GeoWorks: GEOS (8-bit operating system), for 6502-based home computers (HC/GEOS), primarily...
Windows 1. ...
VisiCorp Visi On was a short-lived but influential graphical user interface-based operating environment program for IBM PC compatible personal computers running early versions of MS-DOS. Although Visi On was never popular (as it had steep minimum system requirements for its day), it was a notable influence on...
Software Carousel was a task-switching program for MS-DOS-based computers. ...
TopView was a text-mode MS-DOS multitasker written by IBM and released in 1984, together with their new PC AT computer. ...
DESQview was a text mode multitasking program developed by Quarterdeck Office Systems which enjoyed modest popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ...
External links - GEM
- an excellent page with history, documentation, and links to various open-source GEM projects - Digital Research's GEM (Intel 8086 version!)
- includes downloadable copies of the latest GEM/3 release and developer system - http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/GEM/
- Afros - a complete free Atari OS, using EmuTOS and other components.
- Aranym Atari Running on ANY Machine: a complete open-source environment for running ST GEM applications
- Screen shots
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