< operating system > (GUI) The use of pictures rather than just words to represent the input and output of a program. A program with a GUI runs under some windowing system (e.g. The X Window System , MacOS , Microsoft Windows , Acorn RISC OS , NEXTSTEP ). The program displays certain icons , buttons , dialogue boxes , etc. in its windows on the screen and the user controls it mainly by moving a pointer on the screen (typically controlled by a mouse ) and selecting certain objects by pressing buttons on the mouse while the pointer is pointing at them. This contrasts with a command line interface where communication is by exchange of strings of text.
Windowing systems started with the first real -time graphic display systems for computers, namely the SAGE Project [Dates?] and Ivan Sutherland 's Sketchpad (1963). Douglas Engelbart 's Augmentation of Human Intellect project at SRI in the 1960s developed the On-Line System , which 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, Bill English . The Xerox PARC team established the WIMP concept, which appeared commercially in the Xerox 8010 (Star) system in 1981.
Beginning in 1980(?), led by Jef Raskin , the Macintosh team at Apple Computer (which included former members of the 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 Mac OS X .
Microsoft modeled the first version of Windows , released 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)