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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!amdahl!oliveb!felix!jsf
From: jsf@felix.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: GemDraw GemWrite
Message-ID: <7420@felix.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Sep-87 17:32:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: felix.7420
Posted: Tue Sep 15 17:32:07 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 06:01:22 EDT
References: <2182@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: jsf@felix.UUCP (Jeff Freedman)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 25
Keywords: missing defunct why?

In article <2182@ihlpf.ATT.COM> rtb@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Todd) writes:
>
>It seems obvious now that Gemwrite and GemDraw will never be
>available for the ST. I am posting this article because
>I am curious. Does anybody have any theories as to why these
>two programs died on the vine?


I have a copy of GEM WRITE for the ATARI ST from around July of 1985, before
the ST was widely available.  It's quite buggy, and not really useable; but
it does seem to have most features implemented.  I'm not sure why they never
finished it, but here are some possibilities:

    1.  Some of the top GEM developers at DRI left around that time to form
	Ventura Software.
    2.  DRI and ATARI didn't seem to be getting along very well.  I think this
	has something to do with the fact that GEM on the ST wasn't completed
	(no font support) or fully debugged.  I've worked with GEM on the PC
	as well as the ST, and have encountered ZERO bugs in the PC version.
    3.  Perhaps the DRI people had advance warning that ATARI was going to
	give away free copies of First Word, thus killing the market for
	third-party word processors.

				-- Jeff Freedman
				...hplabs!felix!jsf