Graphic Software Systems

Company based in Wilsonville, Oregon, USA that specialised in vector graphics software. Initially wrote graphic software as a contractor for numerous clients including Digital Research, but GSS actually wrote most of the GSX graphics library code that was later the basis for DR's GEM windowing system. A little later the company introduced the "GSS-Toolkit", that were graphics routines that helped DOS programmers to write reasonably device independent graphics code. In 1984 the company introduced "GSS-Plottalk", a chart plotting package that uses English like commands to create graphs, it was sold mainly to larger businesses via VAR's and system integrators.

The sudden popularity of Microsoft Windows v3 effectively killed off GSS's main business line since it has a graphics rendering engine built in and although not as capable and mature as the GSS products the Windows code came essentially for free. The company tried its hand in manufacturing graphics card but failed and survived mostly on their first end-user product in the form of the "PC-Xview" package that allowed DOS based computers to act as X server terminals, thereby providing businesses with a X11 based terminal that was much cheaper than a UNIX workstation.

In 1990 the company was taken over by Spectragraphics for 6 million USD, who in turn sold the operation to Tektronics, and the GSS part of the operation effectively became the Tektronics X-Terminal division.

Products

 * AT1000 - Short lived graphics card ca 1989.
 * DGDS - Firmware and DOS, Windows and AutoCAD drivers for the TMS34010 and Intel 8278 graphics chips.
 * Graphics Development Toolkit (GDT) - DOS & OS/2 graphics library
 * GSS-Core -
 * GSS-Drivers -
 * GSS+GKS - IBM RT-PC Graphical Kernel System implementation a development of the earlier GSS-Kernel.
 * GSS-Plottalk - DOS & AT&T UNIX plotting package - Sold to OEM's primarily.
 * GSS-Solutions -
 * GSS-Terminal -
 * GSS-Toolkit - Predecessor to GDT (Above)
 * GSS*X/386 - Workstation terminal software similar to PC-Xview that ran on 80386 PC's.
 * PC-Xview - DOS based X-Windows terminal emulator for 286/386 PCs - USD 295 in 1989
 * Virtual Device Interface (VDI) - Graphic abstraction layer used in graphic cards, including the IBM EGA

Personnel

 * Lee Lorenzen (ex-Xerox, later founded Ventura)