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GEM (desktop environment)
GEM (for Graphics Environment Manager) is a discontinued operating environment released by Digital Research in 1985. GEM is known primarily as the native graphical user interface of the Atari ST series of computers, providing a WIMP desktop. It was also available for IBM PC compatibles and shipped with some models from Amstrad. It was available on the BBC Master computer with an Intel 80186 co-processor. GEM is used as the core for some commercial MS-DOS programs, the most notable being Ventura Publisher. It was ported to other computers that previously lacked graphical interfaces, but never gained traction. The final retail version of GEM was released in 1988.
Digital Research later[when?] produced X/GEM for their FlexOS real-time operating system with adaptations for OS/2 Presentation Manager and the X Window System under preparation as well.
In late 1984, GEM started life at DRI as an outgrowth of a more general-purpose graphics library known as GSX (Graphics System Extension), written by a team led by Don Heiskell since about 1982. Lee Jay Lorenzen (at Graphic Software Systems) who had recently left Xerox (the birthplace of the modern GUI) wrote much of the code. 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 8-bit and 16-bit platforms CP/M-80, Concurrent CP/M, CP/M-86 and MS-DOS (NEC APC-III) would run on, a task that otherwise would have required considerable effort to port due to the large differences in graphics hardware (and concepts) between the various systems of that era.
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 (Graphics Device Operating System) and the latter as GIOS (Graphics Input/Output System), a play on the division of CP/M into the machine-independent BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System) and the machine-specific BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). GDOS was a selection of routines that handled the GKS drawing, while GIOS actually used the underlying hardware to produce the output.
The DOS version of GSX supports loading drivers in the CP/M-86 CMD format. Consequently, the same driver binary may operate under both CP/M-86 and DOS.
The 16-bit version of GSX 1.3 evolved into one part of what would later be known as GEM, which was an effort to build a full GUI system using the earlier GSX work as its basis. Originally known as Crystal as a play on an IBM project called Glass, the name was later changed to GEM.
Under GEM, GSX became GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface), 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 new module, GEM AES (Application Environment Services), provided the window management and UI elements, and GEM Desktop used both libraries in combination to provide a GUI. The 8086 version of the entire system was first officially demoed at COMDEX in November 1984, following a demonstration on the 80286-based Acorn Business Computer in September 1984 where the software had been attributed to Acorn, and the system was shipped as GEM/1 on 28 February 1985.
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GEM (desktop environment)
GEM (for Graphics Environment Manager) is a discontinued operating environment released by Digital Research in 1985. GEM is known primarily as the native graphical user interface of the Atari ST series of computers, providing a WIMP desktop. It was also available for IBM PC compatibles and shipped with some models from Amstrad. It was available on the BBC Master computer with an Intel 80186 co-processor. GEM is used as the core for some commercial MS-DOS programs, the most notable being Ventura Publisher. It was ported to other computers that previously lacked graphical interfaces, but never gained traction. The final retail version of GEM was released in 1988.
Digital Research later[when?] produced X/GEM for their FlexOS real-time operating system with adaptations for OS/2 Presentation Manager and the X Window System under preparation as well.
In late 1984, GEM started life at DRI as an outgrowth of a more general-purpose graphics library known as GSX (Graphics System Extension), written by a team led by Don Heiskell since about 1982. Lee Jay Lorenzen (at Graphic Software Systems) who had recently left Xerox (the birthplace of the modern GUI) wrote much of the code. 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 8-bit and 16-bit platforms CP/M-80, Concurrent CP/M, CP/M-86 and MS-DOS (NEC APC-III) would run on, a task that otherwise would have required considerable effort to port due to the large differences in graphics hardware (and concepts) between the various systems of that era.
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 (Graphics Device Operating System) and the latter as GIOS (Graphics Input/Output System), a play on the division of CP/M into the machine-independent BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System) and the machine-specific BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). GDOS was a selection of routines that handled the GKS drawing, while GIOS actually used the underlying hardware to produce the output.
The DOS version of GSX supports loading drivers in the CP/M-86 CMD format. Consequently, the same driver binary may operate under both CP/M-86 and DOS.
The 16-bit version of GSX 1.3 evolved into one part of what would later be known as GEM, which was an effort to build a full GUI system using the earlier GSX work as its basis. Originally known as Crystal as a play on an IBM project called Glass, the name was later changed to GEM.
Under GEM, GSX became GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface), 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 new module, GEM AES (Application Environment Services), provided the window management and UI elements, and GEM Desktop used both libraries in combination to provide a GUI. The 8086 version of the entire system was first officially demoed at COMDEX in November 1984, following a demonstration on the 80286-based Acorn Business Computer in September 1984 where the software had been attributed to Acorn, and the system was shipped as GEM/1 on 28 February 1985.