GDDM (Graphical Data Display Manager) is a

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal ...

system for the IBM

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a model range of IBM mainframe computers announced on June 30, 1970, as the successors to the System/360 family. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path f ...

which was developed in IBM's Hursley lab, and first released in 1979. GDDM was originally designed to provide programming support for the IBM 3279 colour display terminal and the associated 3287 colour printer. The 3279 was a colour graphics terminal designed to be used in a general business environment. GDDM was extended in the early 1980s to provide graphics support for all of IBM's display terminals and printers, and ran on all of IBM's mainframe operating systems. GDDM also provided support for the (then current) international standards for interactive computer graphics: GKS and PHIGS. Both GKS and PHIGS were designed around the requirements of CAD systems. GDDM is also available on the IBM i midrange operating system, as well as its predecessor, the AS/400. GDDM comprises a number of components: * Graphics primitives - lines, circles, boxes etc. * Graphing - through the Presentation Graphics Feature (PGF) * Language support - PL/I, REXX, COBOL etc. * Conversion capabilities - for example to GIF format. * Interactive Chart Utility (ICU). GDDM remains in widespread use today, embedded in many

z/OS z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest: ...

applications, as well as in system programs.

GDDM and OS/2 Presentation Manager

IBM and

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began collaborating on the design of

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

in 1986. The Graphics Presentation Interface (GPI), the graphics API in the OS/2 Presentation Manager, was based on IBM's GDDM and the Graphics Control Program (GCP). GCP was originally developed in Hursley for the 3270/PC-G and 3270/PC-GX terminals. The GPI was the primary graphics API for the

operating system. At the time (1980s), the

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

(GUI) was still in its early stages of popularity, but already it was clear that the foundation of a good GUI was a graphics API with strong ''real-time interactive'' capabilities. Unfortunately, the design of GDDM was closer to (at the time) traditional graphics APIs like GKS, which made it unsuited for more than the simplest interactive uses. Microsoft and IBM went their separate ways in 1991. Microsoft continued development of its

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

operating environment with

Graphics Device Interface The Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is a legacy component of Microsoft Windows responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers. Windows apps use Windows API to interact with ...

(GDI) graphics API. IBM continued with OS/2 for several more years.

References

* Charles Petzold, '' Programming the OS/2 Presentation Manager'', Microsoft Press, 1989. {{ISBN, 1-55615-170-5.

External links

announcement of 3279 and 3287.

GDDM Programming Guide
Graphics software OS/2 Graphical Data Display Manager IBM mainframe software