Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!franny.Berkeley.EDU!c91a-ra
From: c91a-ra@franny.Berkeley.EDU (reader.john.kawakami)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: GEM programming
Keywords: GEM
Message-ID: <6283@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 8 Oct 88 20:48:02 GMT
References: <586@sdcc15.UUCP> <647@laura.UUCP>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: c91a-ra@franny.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (reader.john.kawakami)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 33

In article <647@laura.UUCP> markhof@exunido.UUCP (Ingolf Markhof) writes:
>In article <586@sdcc15.UUCP> you write:
>>Here is some questions about GEM:
>>
>>  1.  Why is the number of windows limited to 8?  Why did DRI design
>>  this way?  With a miminum of 512k memory for the ST, memory
>
>    My information is, that the Microsoft Company who developed GEM got some
>trouble with Apple because of the violation of copyrights. As you know,
>GEM is very similar to the Mac's user interface and Apple did not want
>to see such a plagiate. I don't know the details, but the result was that
>Microsoft was not allowed to produce an own user interface that is to
>much Mac-like. Therefore, GEM got the eight-window restriction.

Major corrections:  First, GEM was developed by Digital Research Inc. (DRI)
not Microsoft (which makes Windows for the PCs).  Apple tried to sue DRI,
but they settled out of court.  As a result, the desktop icons changed,
close-full-shrink window icons changed, and pull-down menus became drop-down
menus.  Later, the desktop for PC-GEM was changed again--to the point of 
being unusable.

Apple is going through litigation with Microsoft and HP over similar so-
called copyright infringements (I may be wrong here, maybe it has been
settled already).

The 8-window bug should not be related to this.  I suspect that window space,
like folder space, is constant.  This bug could be avoided by using dynamic
memory allocation.  But, this might be hampered by the non-standard (read:
sh*tty) Malloc.  I don't think this would be hard to fix--but the fixes to
Malloc may render some programs un-runnable.

TTL EXE MUX PRG A3I MTX TTP FOE TUS APP JTK MMU CRT VDI TOS DRI GEM CPM ACC OMV
JOH NKA WAK AMI c91 a-r a@f ran ny. Ber kel ey. Edu kaw aka mi@ zen .Be kel ey.