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I remember Ventura Publisher! I used it to typeset school newsletters. The alternative was Aldus PageMaker but that ran on either Mac or Windows 3.1 and I only

by wenc 4y ago

I remember Ventura Publisher! I used it to typeset school newsletters. The alternative was Aldus PageMaker but that ran on either Mac or Windows 3.1 and I only had a PC XT then, so I ran Ventura on DOS. It definitely looked like a GEM app. I don't know if it could actually run under GEM or if it used a GEM runtime underneath (it came as a standadalone). But it was my gateway DTP app -- it was quite powerful and full-fledged for a DOS GUI app. I later moved to PageMaker and then QuarkXPress (all of these predated InDesign).

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
They bundled their own (forked probably) GEM runtime with it. No Desktop or ability to launch other apps. And I don't know if they ever bothered providing a standalone version that would work with DR's GEM. Also not sure why they never ported to the Atari ST. Would have been probably quite trivial. TimeWorks Publisher also ran under GEM. And looked a lot like Ventura. And existed for the Atari ST as well.
- lproven 4y ago
  AFAIK, runtime GEM works like Runtime Windows did. If you run it directly from DOS it launches its own version. If you run the full standalone desktop, and use that to launch the executable, it runs under the desktop. And I believe it should run on FreeGEM (including the OpenGEM distro) today.
mhd 4y ago
Those early DTP applications all made good use of graphical interfaces, so a few others used GEM, too (e.g. Office Publisher). It's been a while, but didn't early versions of PageMaker even include Windows (2.0), if you didn't already have it? On IBM PCs, you couldn't really expect anything, so bundling makes sense. I think some mice (Genius and/or Logitech) included simpler DTP applications, too. Ventura Publisher was pretty great. I think it fared better with multi-column layouts than most other applications, including InDesign until rather recently (spanning headlines).
teh_klev 4y ago
> It definitely looked like a GEM app. I don't know if it could actually run under GEM From my own memories, circa ~1986 I got introduced to Ventura Publisher and it definitely ran under GEM; GEM/2 seems to ring a bell. We were also using lower end PC's at the time but it was quite snappy to use. It was the first time I'd ever used a mouse having been a hardcore WordStar (under CP/M and DOS) user for all my word processing needs previously :)

by wenc 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

They bundled their own (forked probably) GEM runtime with it. No Desktop or ability to launch other apps. And I don't know if they ever bothered providing a standalone version that would work with DR's GEM. Also not sure why they never ported to the Atari ST. Would have been probably quite trivial. TimeWorks Publisher also ran under GEM. And looked a lot like Ventura. And existed for the Atari ST as well.

lproven 4y ago
AFAIK, runtime GEM works like Runtime Windows did. If you run it directly from DOS it launches its own version. If you run the full standalone desktop, and use that to launch the executable, it runs under the desktop. And I believe it should run on FreeGEM (including the OpenGEM distro) today.

mhd 4y ago

Those early DTP applications all made good use of graphical interfaces, so a few others used GEM, too (e.g. Office Publisher). It's been a while, but didn't early versions of PageMaker even include Windows (2.0), if you didn't already have it? On IBM PCs, you couldn't really expect anything, so bundling makes sense. I think some mice (Genius and/or Logitech) included simpler DTP applications, too. Ventura Publisher was pretty great. I think it fared better with multi-column layouts than most other applications, including InDesign until rather recently (spanning headlines).

teh_klev 4y ago

> It definitely looked like a GEM app. I don't know if it could actually run under GEM From my own memories, circa ~1986 I got introduced to Ventura Publisher and it definitely ran under GEM; GEM/2 seems to ring a bell. We were also using lower end PC's at the time but it was quite snappy to use. It was the first time I'd ever used a mouse having been a hardcore WordStar (under CP/M and DOS) user for all my word processing needs previously :)