TopView
More info
- Owner
- IBM
- Released
- 1985
- Type
- Windowing and multitasking environment for DOS
IBM's text-mode windowing environment for DOS, which ran several programs at once — and sold poorly.
IBM released TopView in early 1985, months ahead of Windows 1.0 and DESQview. It was text mode throughout: programs got windows built from characters, could run side by side and swap data through a clipboard. Programs that wrote straight to video memory, which was nearly all of them, had to make do with running full screen.
Its most lasting legacy is the PIF, the Program Information File that described how much memory a DOS program needed and how it behaved. Windows adopted the format and carried it for more than a decade. TopView itself was slow, wanted more memory than most PCs had and attracted few adapted programs. DESQview did the same job better and could run TopView's programs too.