Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!philmtl!philabs!ttidca!woodside
From: woodside@ttidca.TTI.COM (George Woodside)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari GEM and GEM/3...
Message-ID: <4702@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 5 Jul 89 12:02:44 GMT
References: <8907030235.AA29001@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: woodside@ttidcb.tti.com (George Woodside)
Organization: Citicorp/TTI, Santa Monica
Lines: 35

In article <8907030235.AA29001@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> chuck@UMBC1.UMBC.EDU ("Chuck Rickard; ", PC) writes:
...[edited]...
>...  Much to my
>surprise when I started GEM, I had to ugly looking windows and a wimpy menu
>bar to look at.  These windows couldn't even be sized!  From what I remember,
>Xerox was sued by Apple (during the sueing days...) for infringing on the 
>"look and feel" of the Macintosh Desktop.  Was this drastic change to GEM a
>part of that legal action, or was it voluntary?  (The former seems more likely
>than the latter...)  If the suit did make them change, why didn't Atari have
>to change their GEM, considering it was identical to the original IBM GEM?
>Allan, would like to explain this one for me?   :-)

I'm not Allan, but...

It was DRI (Digital Research Incorporated) who wrote GEM, not Xerox.

Yes, this crippled GEM on the PC is the result of the Apple lawsuit.

I attended a GEM developer's seminar hosted by DRI a couple years ago when
this mutant was displayed. The DRI staff hosting the seminar were trying
to hype it as the "improved, new look" of GEM, but no one there was buying
it. There were always exactly two windows on the desktop, they couldn't be
resized, or moved. The "Desk" menu item had been moved to the extreme right
of the menu bar, while all other titles started from the left. There were
other "de-provements" as well, but I don't recall any more.

Atari did not change the ST GEM, since they had already purchased the rights
to the version they implemented. For Apple to force DRI to force Atari to
change the implemented GEM in the ST would have put thousands more lawyers
to work for several more eons. This is one time when the older version
of a piece of software is vastly superior to the current version. Bugs
and all.
-- 
*George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA 
*Path:       ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside