Gemstone characteristic that lends value to a gemstone. Apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity engraved gems and hardstone carvings, such as cups, were major luxury art forms. A gem maker is called a lapidary or gemcutter; a diamond cutter is called a diamantaire. The traditional classification in the West, which goes back to the ancient Greeks, begins with a distinction between "precious" and "semi-precious"; similar distinctions are made in other cultures. In modern use the precious stones are diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald, with all other gemstones being semi-precious. This distinction reflects the rarity of the respective stones in ancient times,
GemStone IV named "Avalon" is available for Mac OS X. No official Linux client exists. "GemStone" was first demonstrated to GEnie in 1987 before Simutronics was officially incorporated. It was only used as a demonstration model and was never available to the general subscribers. "GemStone ][" was released in April 1988 to GEnie customers. However, "GemStone ][" was very short-lived, and "GemStone III" went into open beta testing in December 1989, officially launching on February 1, 1990. The transition from "][" to "III" maintained significant portions of the environment, but not all, and character records were not maintained over the transition, requiring