[4][5] GKS provides a set of drawing features for two-dimensional vector graphics suitable for charting and similar duties.
[6] GKS formed the basis of Digital Research's GSX which evolved into VDI, one of the core components of GEM.
GEM was the native GUI on the Atari ST and was occasionally seen on PCs, particularly in conjunction with Ventura Publisher.
One popular application based on an implementation of GKS is the GR Framework,[7] a C library for high-performance scientific visualization that has become a common plotting backend among Julia users.
A main developer and promoter of the GKS was José Luis Encarnação, formerly director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD) in Darmstadt, Germany.