[Lazarus] The future of desktop

[Kostas Michalopoulos]

Actually, Microsoft has nothing to do with GEM, it was made by Digital
Research. Also technically GEM is/was very different from Windows (GEM
relies on interrupts and can run only a single program while Windows
was multitasking from the start, GEM apps can be made by any DOS
compiler that can issue interrupts and has the necessary header files,
Windows apps require special compilers, etc). You can check FreeGEM
for an up to date version (the source code of GEM was released a while
ago and some people fixed bugs and added a few features).

Both Microsoft and Digital Research were sued by Apple when their
systems were released. DR decided to modify their 'desktop' program to
disallow overlapping windows and removed the trash can (previously it
looked very similar to Mac Finder) while Microsoft decided to counter
Apple's claim. In fact Windows 2 was even more like Mac (overlapping
windows vs Windows 1's tiled windows, more Mac-like colors, etc) and
AFAIK even when Windows 3 was released, they hadn't settled yet on the
case.

Check http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html for a timeline, some
history notes, screenshots, etc of various GUIs over time, from the
first Alto to Windows 8.1 The site is slightly biased against
Microsoft, but the historic comments are good. I've read about
Microsoft's and Apple's history from a couple of books too (i like
computer history) and i think whatever mentioned there is mostly
right. I haven't checked everything in the site though and i believe
it misses some aspects (f.e. Lisa introduced more than just pulldown
menus - f.e. the whole concept of finder was something new at the time
and Andy Hertzfeld's book on the development of Macintosh has images
from other prototypes that show how much the Mac and Lisa teams
actually came up with that today we take granted).


On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Hans-Peter Diettrich
<DrDiettrich1 at aol.com> wrote:
> Michael Schnell schrieb:
>
>> On 12/02/2013 10:55 AM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>>>
>>>  I think you're at risk of mixing layers again.
>>
>> Of course you are absolutely right and I do know this.
>>
>> But I replied to Microsoft being the inventor of the desktop we are using.
>> And Microsoft does not use a  (publicly) defined X layer but that layer is
>> an integral part of what is perceived as the thingy that holds the programs'
>> GUIs (and might be called "Desktop").
>
>
> The first MS desktop was GEM, borrowed from Digital Research borrowed from
> Apple, I used it also on my Atari ST. License issues forced MS to create
> something slightly different, named Windows. The major difference of Windows
> (vs. GEM) is the added messaging system, with message pipes and loops, which
> turned the GEM event polling model upside down. Next come menus, which were
> moved from the screen into forms. The rest is technically almost the same,
> with only a different look to convince judges in defense against Apple and
> DRI claims.
>
> DoDi
>
>
>
> --
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