An amazing piece of Amiga history
EGS , for
Enhanced Graphics System , is a solution developed by the German company
Viona Development. Released around 1991, it has offered a complete RTG system for Amiga, including:
- a hardware abstraction for all 24bit graphics boards that supported the EGS standard
- a very advanced GUI that took full advantage of the Amiga multitasking and the capabilities of 24-bit graphics cards
EGS was written in a new language called
Cluster, described by its author as an evolution of
Modula-2 (itself being an evolution of the Pascal programing language).
The first presentation of EGS to the general public in the USA, operating on a GVP graphic board, took place in April 1992, that means
3 years before the official release of
Windows 95.
How can I test EGS?Although designed to operate on an 8 or 24bit high resolution framebuffer, EGS is fully compatible with the builtin ECS and AGA graphics modes.
Therefore, it is quite possible to install it on an
Amiga Classic (as long as you have a 68020, enough available RAM and if possible an FPU).
The latest version can be found on
Aminet. The software even works perfectly under the UAE emulation!
The EGS system automatically adapts to the amount of available colors, thanks to an automatic dithering and color palette system.
The look & feel of the GUI under EGSTaking its inspiration from the
workstation's GUIs like
X11,
IRIX or
NextStep, EGS shows a very polished and consistent look.
The features and ergonomy are extremelly advanced for this generation, including a docking system available for every drop-down menu and window opened by the EGS applications as well as a global
object-oriented approach.
Screenshots, boys & girls!The system preferences of EGS are similar to the one found in AmigaOS, pushing the features and ergnonomy a step further.
Some demo applications show off the awesomeness of the GUI, the graphic layer and the infamous multitasking of the Amiga. EGS provides a very advanced and accurate performance monitor that details the delicate complexity of AmigaOS.
A builting image viewer offers several resizing modes (nearest, linear, spline...) with more or less fast / accurate interpolation.
The text editor mentions, in its "About ..." window, the
Cluster language on which the EGS is entirely based.
Finally, a video capture of EGS in operation
Only Amiga? ... 
