Boys and girls

I'm very glad to announce OpenGEM 6 is (finally) about to be released.

As you know OpenGEM is intended to provide a great GUI file manager for
FreeDOS.  Over the years we've made some real advances in usability and
stability.

John Elliott of the FreeGEM community has introduced a lot of really
great code.  His desktop has already brought new life to GEM and has
been highly successful in OpenGEM 5.  John has continued coding and
OpenGEM 6 sees a great new advance: we now have support for the DOS
international code page.  This will greatly simplify any attempts to
create international versions of OpenGEM.

John Hupp has contributed a great deal of time and energy in the testing
and deployment of new printing support for OpenGEM 6.  We now support HP
Deskjet+, Deskjet 560C, and Deskjet 612C printers.  Other HP Deskjets
might also work.  You'll notice the new printer support when you open
the GEM Output application.  You'll also notice that we support
postscript printing out-of-the-box.

OpenGEM 6 is intended to provide a really great GUI for FreeDOS 1.0.
This means we're looking at a long future for this particular release.
It's therefore essential that OpenGEM 6 can be patched and updated
easily.  There is a new automatic install and update system to ensure
this is possible.

While OpenGEM 6 is opening it will look for either INSTALL.ZIP or
UPDATE.ZIP files in the C:\ root.  If it detects one of these files it
will offer to update or install the system accordingly.  This new
framework will allow for the easy installation not only of system
updates but also GEM applications.  It is currently being documented for
the OpenGEM website.

Talking of the website...there is a new OpenGEM website coming.  It will
be at http://gem.opendawn.com.  It's going to be simple, clear and will
be created in XHTML.

OpenGEM 6 will be released on the 14th of July.  Please help make sure
everything works by downloading and testing a copy of the system from
http://www.opendawn.com/opengem6.zip.  This download is around 2MB in
size.  The reason for the increase in size?  Full support for different
sound, video and printer drivers, different desk accessories and a
system recovery option in case OpenGEM stops working.

If you download the test version of OpenGEM 6 just drag and drop the
files inside to your C:\ root (or - if you're using a command line -
recursively unpack the files to your C:\ root).

GEM at the C:\> prompt will start OpenGEM 6.

SETUP at the C:\> prompt will bring you to the OpenGEM 6 setup options.

If you need to load drivers or are having difficulty starting OpenGEM
look inside the C:\GEM.BAT file.  Perhaps you need to uncomment some
options to ensure everything will load correctly.

Regards

Shane

- --
Shane Martin Coughlan
e: shane@opendawn.com