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

[Shane M. Coughlan]

> I have been seeing a failure of group dynamics among us for some time.
> Our tendency to flap around and spend so much time off topic is a common
> symptom of group which no longer has a reason for existence.

Yes, as has been mentioned before there were problems with working out what
should be done next.  Actually, I felt that the cheerful club atmosphere of
this list gradually faded during 2002, and that interest in GEM itself was
lost.

GEM is something that I find very interesting personally.  I came across it
when I was busy playing with various MS DOS distros for my own use.
(Remember ShaneOS?).  I needed a GUI, and I had worked with things like DOS
START and SEAL.  GEM offered me something new.  I spent a lot of time with
it, and decided to use it as the GUI for my distro.  As I worked on it I
realised that for my purposes I needed a different type of GEM release than
those currently used, and so I went and made it.  As it happens this project
passed by my DOS distro entirely, and I ended up just making OpenGEM (which
I first released summer 2002).

GEM is something that I have found useful on my own machine, and it's
something that is a lot of fun to play with.  Given that my distro is based
more towards use rather than playing (I wanteds a GEM that installs and
works, not one that is meant for fiddling), I would describe my development
of OpenGEM as relatively professionally keyed. I release update patches.  I
try to have the configuration happen through my batch files rather than
people doing it themselves.  I try to release updates to correct bugs and
improve ease of use, not add new features.  There can be no doubt that
OpenGEM is a GEM distro for end users.  But I don't think that is the
reasons for the lack of momentum on the list.

Davey said he's not happy with the direction GEM is taking.  Me either in
some ways.  I would not describe it as a direction though.  The list is
just...quiet.  People don't talk.  They don't say what is going on.  Has
everyone on this list actually done nothing with GEM is two years?  You
know.....it would be interesting if people just talked about what they were
doing.

One thing for me recently has been playing with GEM on my laptop (DELL
Latitude CSx H500). It runs really well and the Neomagic graphics chip
expands the 640x480 desktop to fill the screen.  I'm planning to play with
the 800x600 driver soon, though I want to try and chat with someone who got
it working before I do so.

One thing that I have found in the last year is that John's desktop seems to
work really well.  I personally do not get many crashes, though I get a few
crash reports from OpenGEM users.  I think this has to do with the ACCs
running.  I plan to introduce a feature to switch them on and off soon.
OFFICE.ACC appears to consume a lot of memory, and I suspect it is causing
problems.  I'm planning to test that idea shortly.

I've never tested GEM with printing myself.  I currently have a Lexmark X73,
and I will try to play with that soon.  Only thing is that I ran out of ink
again, so it'll have to wait :(

I know the Maxframe guys were having fun a couple of weeks ago running
OpenGEM on REAL/32.  They were also setting up networking, and I set them on
the trail of Heinz's work with MS Client (he got GEMWeb working on a
network...do you guys know about that?).  They have not reported in since.
I'll drop Jim a line on DR list to see what's up.

FreeDOS and GEM work fine these days.  I know this because so many people
use it.  I did discover a problem with some FreeDOS bits and my laptop
though.  Kaboom.  I'm trying to work out what went wrong.

So.  You see.  Things are happening.  Personally I'm having a lot of fun
with GEM.  I play with it quite a lot in relative terms.  It's a simple and
fun tool.

Ben, could you add a listing for the OpenGEM site to deltasoft sometime?
Please please please.  I've been asking for ages.

Regards

Shane
http://gem.shaneland.co.uk