operating system (GUI) The use of pictures rather than just
words to represent the input and output of a program. A
the screen and the user controls it mainly by moving a
and selecting certain objects by pressing buttons on the mouse
while the pointer is pointing at them. This contrasts with a
strings of text.
Windowing systems started with the first
real-time graphic
display systems for computers, namely the
SAGE Project
incorporated a mouse-driven cursor and multiple windows.
Several people from Engelbart's project went to Xerox PARC in
the early 1970s, most importantly his senior engineer,
BillEnglish. The Xerox PARC team established the
WIMP concept,
which appeared commercially in the
Xerox 8010 (Star) system
in 1981.
Xerox PARC group) continued to develop such ideas in the first
commercially successful product to use a GUI, the Apple
Macintosh, released in January 1984. In 2001 Apple introduced
in 1985, on Mac OS. Windows was a GUI for
MS-DOS that had
been shipped with
IBM PC and compatible computers since
1981. Apple sued Microsoft over infringement of the
look-and-feel of the MacOS. The court case ran for many
years.
[Wikipedia].
(2002-03-25)