The Answer Guy

A GEM of a Question?

From John K. Straughan on Tue, 02 May 2000

I have a question stuck in my head which is keeping me up at night! What was the name of the very first GUI program that the original AOL software was based upon? This would have been around 1987,1988,1989. It was prior to MS Windows. AOL wasn't the only company to use it. It never really evolved, but there were some applications written for it. I'm thinking it was GEO something, or something GEO. It was for PC, MS-DOS systems. Please help so I can sleep!!! Thanks - John

(Note: it's a bad idea to include HTML attachment/copies of your e-mail to most people. I'd suggest doing that only in cases where you know that the correspondent involved prefers that particular format).

I don't know what package you're thinking of. As far as I remember the original AOL client software was purely for Apple Macintosh systems.

However, it sounds like you're talking about some version that might have run on GeoWorks Ensemble. GeoWorks Ensemble was actually a predecessor of MS Windows --- but it did run on 8086 (XT class) computers on which MS Windows was never supported. If I recall correctly GeoWorks orginally released GEOS, an operating system and graphical environment for the Commodore 64?

Geoworks Inc. has gone on to focus on things like cell phones and WAP. There as a /. (http://www.slashdot.org) thread about their recent attempts to use U.S. and Japanese patents which may stifle the deployment of free WAP and WML packages.

Meanwhile the desktop software that was part of Geoworks Ensemble appears to have been licensed out or spun off to a company called "New Deal Inc." (http://www.newdealinc.com). The specifically mention compatibility with Linux DOSEMU on their web site. This might make an interesing application suite --- though a native version for Linux would be nicer.

There was also the GEM graphical environment by Digital Research. This was the GUI on which Ventura Publisher was originally based. I think that GEM was basically a clone of the Xerox PARC look-and-feel --- very similar in appear and behavior to the Xerox 820 and to the original Macintosh finder software.

Since DR was eventually sold to Caldera by Novell, and spun off again as "Caldera Thin Clients." Meanwhile GEM was released under the GPL and it seems that the canonical site for ongoing GEM development on the net would be at: http://www.deltasoft.com/news.htm

Hope that helps.

Copyright © 2000, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 54 June 2000

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