🚀 go-pugleaf

 1j478@cahaba.med.unc.edu (Denise Moultrie) writes ... 

>        Has anyone out there done anything on GEM Paint
>        or GEM Desktop?  A friend of mine is buying a system
>        and these two programs are offered *free* along with
>        a couple of other things.  Also, have you heard
>        anything about a program called AlphaWorks?

Sounds like your friend is getting an Amstrad or Apricot.

I know nothing about AlphaWorks, but I can give you some background on GEM.

GEM is a mouse-driven, point-and-click graphical environment from Digital
Research Inc. It lets programmers build applications that are very
Macintosh-like -- so much so that Apple sued DRI. 

The original version of GEM Desktop for the IBM-PC presented a user
interface very much like the Apple Finder -- i.e., icons for disk drives
and trash can, drop-down menus, desk accessories, and overlapping windows
with icons for each program or data file. The post-lawsuit version of GEM
Desktop is relatively crippled, but still more beginner-friendly than 
a "C:\>" prompt on a black screen.

There are many GEM applications for the PC, of which GEM Paint is one.
Ventura Publisher and the Timeworks desktop publishing program use the GEM
interface. 

GEM also runs on the (Motorola 68000-based) Atari ST, which has hundreds
of GEM applications at this point. Atari applications are occasionally
ported to the PC; the Timeworks publisher and GEM First Word are examples.

GEM is similar to Microsoft Windows, but GEM is simpler, smaller and
faster. As a result, an application such as Ventura Publisher is tolerable
on a PC-XT-class computer where Pagemaker under Windows would be too much
to handle.

   -- Steve Yelvington, up at the lake in Minnesota        
  ... pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve             (UUCP)