Graphical Environment Manager

Digital Research's Graphical Environment Manager, better known by its initials as just GEM, is a graphical user interface shell developed in the 1980's and marketed well into the 1990's, both as a GUI shell sold as GEM Desktop for operating systems such as CP/M, DOS and FlexOS but also as a shell less graphics library primarily sold on an OEM basis as that you could use to develop and ship graphical applications that worked on the aforementioned OS's even though they did not have a graphical shell installed.

It is based on the GSX vector graphics interface library that was primarily built on components the company licensed from Graphic Software Systems and development of it was started as soon as GSX had shipped in 1982 although GEM itself was not shipped until February 1985. GEM was highly influenced by both the Xerox Star and the original Apple Mac and featured a user interface somewhere in between those two, this was not unexpected as GSS Inc. head honcho Lee Lorenzen had worked on the development of the graphics engine and Interpress for the Star at Xerox.

While not a big seller for the company it did manage to outsell Microsoft Windows by a considerable margin up until the release of Windows 3. The best known version of the system was on Atari ST computers where it was used as the GUI component of TOS, but a number of European vendors of IBM PC and other Intel based hardware used the system, most notably Amstrad with their PC compatible budget computers and Apricot with their Sirius compatible systems. It never gained any traction in the North American marketplace and it later transpired that Microsoft offered NA OEM's discounts and perks if they did not ship their computers with the GEM software.

Versions

• Version 4 - 1990 - Only shipped as a graphics library, there was no GEM Desktop version of the system. Updated graphics engine with the Bézier curves from GEM/5 and support for gradients and much improved dialog boxes.
• Version 5 - 1988 - Only shipped as a graphics library, there was no GEM Desktop version of the system. A version of 3.13 with updated graphics engine with Bézier curves and a refreshed 3D like "look and feel".
• Version 3 - 1988 - A single tasking version of GEM/XM with an updated graphics engine and minor look and feel modifications.
• GEM/XM - 1986 - Multitasking version of GEM, could also multitask DOS programs. Only released in a very limited fashion to OEM's as GEM 3 but quickly abandoned.
• Version 2 - 1986
• Version 1 - Early 1985

Versions 1.1 and 1.2 were also released in 1985, the 1.1 was specifically for IBM PC hardware (EGA/CGA) while version 1.2 was specifically for Apricot machines.

Author & publisher

• Graphic Software Systems
• Digital Research