Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!think!mit-eddie!barmar
From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc,net.micro.atari,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: DRI agrees to change GEM
Message-ID: <27@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 04:50:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.27
Posted: Mon Oct  7 04:50:47 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Oct-85 06:01:32 EDT
References: <3208@nsc.UUCP> <1196@vax1.fluke.UUCP> <3226@nsc.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Distribution: net
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 32
Xref: linus net.micro.pc:5267 net.micro.atari:1226 net.micro.mac:2857

In article <3226@nsc.UUCP> chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>Anyone who's seen a Xerox (anyone with a dandelion want to comment?) will
>be the first to admit similarities, but Apple went very strongly out in
>their own direction. The Mac isn't a copy of Xerox' work, it is just
>influenced by it. From what the releases say, that isn't as true of the Mac
>and GEM (I haven't seen GEM yet, so I won't comment on it).

I haven't seen any of the recent Xerox workstations (I used the Alto a
little), but I figured this was the case.  Xerox introduced (or at least
popularized) the mouse and icons, but the detailed approaches are quite
different.  I believe that their interface was based primarily on
dragging icons to other icons, which only survives in the Finder as the
Trash and copying files -- in Xerox systems, one would print a file by
dragging it to the printer icon, and I think one would invoke a program
on a file by dragging the file to the program's icon (I think the
printer and trash can were just particular cases of this general
facility).

I have used GEM a little, and it is a very close copy of the Mac.  The
standard desktop icons are in the same places (disk icons in top right,
trash can in bottom right), the standard menus are almost identical, and
window manipulation is the same (GEM added a minor extension: a "grow to
full screen" icon in the top right corner of windows).  According to an
article in Macworld by one of the Lisa developers, pull-down menus and
double-clicking to open objects were innovations of the Lisa team, and
GEM copied these exactly.  Anyone who knows how to use the Mac Finder
can sit down and feel perfectly comfortable with Gem Desktop; I doubt
that the same could be said about the Dandelion.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar