From: dg AT dcs DOT st-and DOT ac DOT uk
Message-Id: <4688.9703181432@pulteney.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk>
To: opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net
Subject: Re: What good is GEM? 
In-Reply-To: brickman@cjnetworks.com's message of Tue, 18 Mar 97 07:28:23 
 -0600.
	     <199703181323 DOT HAA21946 AT smartsun DOT smartnet DOT net> 
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Date: Tue, 18 Mar 97 14:32:57 +0000

>What good, exactly, is GEM?  What apps will it run,
>and otherwise what advantage(s) does it provide?
[...]

Timeworks DTP, versions one and two.
First Word Plus.
Gem Paint.
Gem Draw.
A handful of utilities.

AFAIR, that's *it*...

GEM died long ago, and no apps have been written for ages. Timeworks is okay 
as a simple DTP package, and First Word Plus is frankly unspeakable. GEM 
doesn't do much: no scalable or rotatable fonts, no EMS/XMS support, no 
multitasking at all, a UI that looks even worse than early MacOS, and so on. 
But it was never intended to do much.

It's very small and simple and would do quite well for a replacement for 
things like the Turbovision library. It's not Windows or GEOS and isn't 
intended to be.


-- 
------------------- http://www-hons-cs.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~dg --------------------
   If you're up against someone more intelligent than you are, do something
    totally insane and let him think himself to death.  --- Pyanfar Chanur
---------------- Sun-Earther David Daton Given of Lochcarron ------------------