[GEM Development] Re: My previous e-mail...

[DAVID L. ORMAND]

>I appreciated Davey's comments, because that is the kind of passion
>which can help a group rediscover its way forward. I enjoy GEM-dev, but
>my limited understanding of programming suggests to me that GEM as it is
>hasn't far to go. Davey's suggestion seems to support the old saying,
>"If it can't go up, maybe it has to go sideways."

Just to ask, how many peecee GEM (OpenGEM, FreeGEM, etc.) people here
are also Atarians?

If there are, then we know that GEM, particularly on upscale peecees,
has a long way to go.  The Atari community is mostly aware that the
future is no longer in unique hardware platforms capable of running
TOS/GEM, but in commodity hardware, either Mac or peecee.

Most of the response to this awareness has been to trot out Atari
emulators, and even (as in the Aranym project) to call them something
more than emulators.  To purists, however, that is unacceptable.

My idea (and goal, as much as someone with as little time and
peecee experience can set such goals) is to have a true, NATIVE GEM
on the peecee.  Replace TOS with DOS (or FreeDOS32, more precisely)
and GEM/AES/VDI with x86 equivalents, which manifestly exist HERE,
and there you have it.  The same quality, capability, aesthetically
pleasing environments that currently run on Falcons, Hades, and Milans
can run on mid- to high-end peecees.  A lot of the Atari programs can
be ported to such an environment.  I think a lot of Atarians would jump
at the chance.  No, it is not a 68000 (or 68040, or a PowerPC), but it
_is_ an upgrade path.

Anyways, if there is hope to be brought from newcomers, it is that
you need not give up on GEM by comparing it with Linux/X/KDE, but
rather to regard it as (among other things) an upgrade path from the
68K Atari.