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Graphical Environment Manager

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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 officially shipped as a desktop retail product until February 1985 (OEM software was sent out in 1984, though). 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 undertook to not ship their computers with the GEM software. There was also a lawsuit brought in by Apple in 1985 that ran into 1986 that stopped USA based computer manufacturers from shipping it with their systems since Apple had threatened to go after any maker that shipped GEM with their system and Digital Research simply did not have the financial wherewithal to offer OEM's indemnity from Apple's lawsuit.

Even as if not a big hit it became quite an influential product in the PC world, not the least since Microsoft Windows was developed in response to it, but there was the air of a missed opportunity about the whole project. GEM worked on hardware that was much slower than what the competition was using for their GUI's which was mostly processors like the 68000, Z8000 and 320016 which outran the 4.77MHz in an IBM XT class machine GEM was designed for quite comfortably, but at the same time GEM on an XT was quite reasonable if not exactly fast.

This was hammered home in somewhat emphatic fashion when Microsoft for a short while offered Windows as a DOS graphics library/runtime in response to the popularity of GEM in that area, but much like the GEM version this allowed Windows developers to ship DOS executable versions of their software without the recipient having Windows installed on their machine. Even though the basic vector drawing engine in GEM was considerably stronger than what Windows had to offer the Windows version was simply bog slow compared to GEM and almost unbearable on an XT, showing that DR's software was much better optimised for low power hardware such as XT class machines that Microsoft's shell.

It is often forgotten that one of the main differences between the releases of Windows 2.1 and 3.0 was not Windows itself, but that the average purchaser of Windows 2 had an XT class machine with a floppy drive and CGA or Hercules compatible graphics card whilst the average purchaser of Windows 3 had a 286 class machine with a hard drive and an EGA or VGA compatible graphics card. The difference between Windows 2 and 3 was in other words as much or more a difference in consumers experience as it was a difference in software quality, and vis a vis Windows 1 and 2 GEM simply gave customers a much better experience on the hardware of the time. Also Digital Research had released a GUI word processor and other graphical applications years before MS delivered a GUI version of Microsoft Word and Excel but for some reason did not develop these products any further.

The Apple lawsuit somehow managed to take the wind out of the marketing of GEM and DR CEO Gary Kidall was by that time showing much more interest in his Grolier CD ROM project than in promoting GEM, development of the system and related software was cut down considerably in late 1986 although a GEM 3 was eventually released in 1988, but that release had none of the features that had been in shown in the GEM/XM beta of 1986. Digital continued developing the graphics engine though, partly in response to the developers of such programs as Artline and Ventura Publisher but by version 3 the engine even supported concepts that have otherwise only been seen in Display Postscript such as Bézier curves and soon thereafter added gradient support, but as DOS sales started to die off in the early 90, so did all work on GEM.

GEM was released as open source code in the late 1990's by then owner Caldera, and you are also free to download and use older binaries that predate the open source release.

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.

Links

Authors & publisher

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