04.019 Is a graphical user interface (GUI) available for 8-bit Apple II's?
Description
This article is from the Apple II Csa2 FAQ, by Jeff Hurlburt with numerous contributions by others.
04.019 Is a graphical user interface (GUI) available for 8-bit Apple II's?
For the 128k Enhanced //e and //c series, the ones which come to mind are
GEOS, Quark's Catalyst, and MouseDesk (aka Apple II Desktop).
GEOS was probably the most popular of the three although it never reached
the popularity it gained on the C64 platform. The downside with GEOS is that it
isn't ProDOS compatible. So, you are stuck with only using the GEOS compatible
programs (GeoPublish, GeoCalc, GeoWrite,....)
Catalyst and MouseDesk are both very similar. They provide a ProDOS
compatible version of the familiar Apple desktop GUI. MouseDesk was purchased
by Apple and renamed Apple II Desktop. This was included in the original System
Disk which shipped with the Apple IIgs. While shipped with the 16bit IIgs, A2
Desktop is an 8 bit program which works very well with my IIc+. I assume it
would work with your IIe :-)
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By: Supertimer
Actually, GEOS is ProDOS compatible, at least in the sense that Catalyst,
MouseDesk, and Apple II Desktop are. GEOS can act as a program launcher for
ProDOS programs. Obviously, for GEOS programs, GEOS acts like the full OS (much
like GS/OS on the IIGS and MacOS on the Mac, actually), but it can do
everything MouseDesk can do in regards to launching ProDOS programs. On the
GEOS desktop, the files show up as icons stamped with "ProDOS; and, the user
can copy and delete ProDOS files.
One neat thing about GEOS is the ability to expand the root directory past
the 51 file limit on a ProDOS disk. If you have a bunch of stuff converted from
DOS 3.3 to ProDOS you may find that things don't fit on the root directory of
the ProDOS disk. Using GEOS, you can copy all the files to the root directory.
By: Rubywand
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