graphical user interface
     n : a user interface based on graphics (icons and pictures and
         menus) instead of text; uses a mouse as well as a
         keyboard as an input device [syn: GUI]

	

	Graphical User Interface
     
         (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)