GIGI

This document introduces GIGI, a "personal end-user terminal" from Digital (DEC), designed to transform human-computer interaction, particularly in educational settings. It highlights the historical challenges of computing, such as limited productivity, complex application development, and poor interfaces due to reliance on specialized or "dumb" terminals.

GIGI offers a solution by providing a single, adaptable, and intelligent terminal with several key features:

1. Three-in-One Terminal: It integrates the capabilities of dumb, graphics, and intelligent terminals, offering a cost-effective and versatile solution that expands the user's view and maximizes productivity.
2. Remote Graphics Instruction Set (ReGIS): This feature off-loads graphic processing from the host computer to GIGI, simplifying graphics, reducing host load and storage requirements, and facilitating text/graphics manipulation with easy-to-use, ASCII-compatible commands.
3. Programmable Keypad: GIGI's keypad can be personalized for various applications and disciplines, simplifying user interfaces, reducing learning curves, improving success rates, and minimizing user errors.
4. Dynamic Character Set Memories: It supports an infinite number of character sets, enabling discipline-specific symbolic communication (e.g., APL, Greek, scientific symbols), which enhances communication effectiveness.
5. Intelligent Terminal Functionality: GIGI acts as a power assist, distributing processing tasks, allowing for application "personalization," increasing CPU efficiency, and enabling more users to be served.

The document emphasizes that GIGI aims to provide an "expanded view into the world of computing" and, when combined with its specific application packages (like Graphics Editor and Character Set Editor), offers immediate utilization and addresses critical educational computing challenges for a wide range of users, from students to administrators.