GEM Instant Messenger was developed to suit as an open instant messaging architecture for GEM computers. GIM is based on open standards such as Windom windowing libraries, LibFaim oscar AIM library, MiNTlib and GNU C. By being open, and depending only on open standards, it is guaranteed that GIM can always be updated and can always work with the most current platform ideals as things change over the years, something that is becoming increasingly important to the Atari community.

As interesting as it may sound, GIM was developed to help maintain my social life while working to help the Atari world. Often times I find myself utilizing an Atari emulator at work or my Falcon at home wishing I could chat with my girlfriend or friends while I code away on something. Gaim works for this sure, but it's awfully slow and requires the X server which I have some problems with with fonts and colors. I wanted something ideal, efficient and having a small footprint. I don't necessarily care about all of the nifty features, but I'd like something GEM native and I'd eventually like it to support IMHTML, perhaps through the highwire engine. With IMHTML we can do stuff like the nifty smileys as well as text and font attributes without me having to code all of this myself.

GIM is developed using the open source QED editor, GNU C and MiNTlib and the excellently flexible and configurable Windom high level GEM library. GIM currently depends on libfaim which is included in the archive. Each tool use has significantly decreased the workload and education necessary to create GIM and I owe each author a great debt for their hard work.