[GEM Development] More early screenshots

[John Elliott]

  This scan of Acorn User from November 1984 has some early screenshots of
GEM, several months before GEM/1 was released (though unfortunately they're 
rather grainy):

<http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_ABC.pdf>

  My comments:

1. I've never seen a standalone icon editor before, but the only copies of
the GEM PTK we've got are quite late. Presumably the editor ended up as part
of the RCS.

2. Solid title bars rather than shaded (as in GEM/1) or outlines (as in
GEM/2).

3. Applications are again named *.EXE rather than *.APP.

4. The Desk menu is amazingly well-populated compared to what we finally
got. Of course, a lot of the options may not have been implemented.

    "About the Desktop" - OK, that one turned up in releases.  

    "Help on Desktop" - No released version of GEM had online help until
    ViewMAX.

    "Exit" - Putting the Exit command in the Desk menu rather than the File 
    menu. Plus ca change, plus c'est MacOS X.

    "Supplies" - Whatever was that?

    "Clipboard" - Presumably intended to be a clipboard viewer.

    "Calculator" - That one survived.

    "List Manager" - Was this the print spooler, or something else?

    "Control Panel" - Presumably what currently ended up as the Options
    menu in GEM/1. Note that there's no Options menu in the screenshots.

5. The Desktop has an Edit menu, though I don't know if it did anything.

-- 
John Elliott