''Impression'' is a
desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
application for systems. It was developed by
Computer Concepts and initially made available in pre-release form during 1989,
having been demonstrated in February 1989 at the ''Which? Computer Show'' and subsequently announced as being available from June 1989.
The "completed" version was eventually delivered on 18th January 1990.
Originally, the application appears to have been developed for Acorn's then-current operating system, Arthur, as a ROM-based product,
but due to dissatisfaction with the state of Arthur during early development of the application, it was then meant to use Computer Concepts' own operating system, Impulse, instead.
(Publicity images for the software depict a different operating environment to RISC OS.
)
Product range and history
Impression II and Junior
''Impression II'', an improved version of the product, was released in 1990 alongside ''Impression Junior'', a cut-down version of Impression II priced at £103, compared to the £194 price of the "senior" product.
Given a degree of instability in early versions of Impression,
Computer Concepts had promised a free upgrade to Impression version 1.1 to existing users. Ultimately, the further development of the software led to a more significant release incorporating several enhancements, and this Impression II release was offered as a free upgrade instead. Enhancements included improved frame selection and manipulation controls, repeating frames for headers and footers, and "instant" in-place rotation of vector and bitmap graphics.
Impression II was featured in the ''Acorn Publishing System'':
a bundle featuring an Archimedes 540 computer, Impression II software,
SVGA
Super VGA (SVGA) is a broad term that covers a wide range of computer display standards that extended IBM's VGA
Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the I ...
-capable monitor, 120 MB hard drive, 256-greyscale flatbed scanner (Computer Concepts' ScanLight Professional), and direct-drive Canon laser printer (Computer Concepts' LaserDirect HiRes8) for a suggested retail price of £4995 plus VAT.
Impression Junior was introduced to compete with word processors on the RISC OS platform such as Pipedream and First Word Plus, both considered "fundamentally character mode programs" with some graphical support. Certain layout features were preserved from the "senior" product such as the use of frames, but "master pages" (a form of templates) and the style mechanism were omitted (or "simplified"
), emphasising traditional effect-based styling of text instead. As with Impression, documents could be printed in a form accurately portraying their on-screen appearance, making use of outline fonts and the font manager, but for rapid output the draft and near-letter quality modes of printers could be used instead. One noted omission was a convenient mailmerge function,
although conventional word processing features such as automatic contents and index generation were also omitted from the product.
Impression Junior was the basis of the word processor component of Acorn Advance: an integrated office suite "similar in concept to
Claris Works
AppleWorks was an integrated office suite containing a word processor, database, and spreadsheet. It was developed by Rupert Lissner for Apple Computer, originally for the Apple II platform and launched in 1984, and was later reworked for the Ma ...
or
Microsoft Works
Microsoft Works was a productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality included a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions had a calendar application and ...
".
Mailmerge functionality was featured in the ''Impression Business Supplement'' product, introduced in 1991 for Impression 2.10 at a price of £57.57, which also provided support for four-colour separations, the ''ExpressionPS'' tool for the processing of PostScript for typesetting purposes, and a selection of file format loaders.
However, these mailmerge capabilities were regarded as somewhat inferior to that provided by the variant of Impression Junior featured in Acorn's ''Advance'' integrated office suite.
In 1997, Impression Junior was made available as a free download from Computer Concepts' Web site, having been replaced in the company's product range by Impression Style in December 1993. The download was perceived as a way of evaluating the Impression family of products for potential purchasers of Impression Style and Publisher.
Impression Publisher and Style
In 1993, Computer Concepts revamped the Impression product line, creating ''Impression Publisher'' as the successor to Impression II and ''Impression Style'' as the successor to Impression Junior. Impression Publisher added various features aimed more at professional use to the core product, such as CMYK colour separations and crop marks, alongside other enhancements. Impression Style built on feedback from existing users and on work done on Impression Junior to produce the word processor component of Acorn Advance.
Both Impression Publisher and Style supported "object linking and embedding" (OLE) and 24-bit colour, and were offered as upgrades to existing users of Impression II and Junior respectively at the same price of £29 plus VAT.
Impression Publisher was also bundled with the separate ''Equasor'' and ''TableMate'' tools to take advantage of the OLE support,
as was Impression Style, with the inclusion of Equasor being regarded as welcome but not as comprehensive as the mathematical typography support of Icon Technology's TechWriter (its principal competitor in this regard), and with TableMate seeking to augment the elementary table editing functionality in the Impression series, being regarded as a "delightful little utility" that was somewhat less flexible than the table support of other word processors (such as Colton Software's Wordz) but "hugely preferable" to the established, "cumbersome" construction of tables using horizontal and vertical rules.
A significant enhancement to Impression Publisher not present in Impression Style was support for irregular frames, albeit only for frames containing graphics, not text. This kind of frame was able to repel text in text frames, thus removing the need for various workarounds that would otherwise be employed to cause text to be wrapped around other areas of a page. Such frames could have non-rectangular outlines involving additional points or nodes, and they could be rotated and scaled, but the irregular frame edge could only consist of straight line sections, not curves, and controls were not provided for precise positioning of outline points. Support for irregular text frames was stated as planned for subsequent versions.
Computer Concepts and the other vendors involved in providing the component applications of Acorn Advance - Clares and Iota - offered a ''Musketeer'' pack featuring Impression Style and the other "full-featured" versions of the Advance applications - Schema 2 and Datapower - as a form of upgrade for Advance users costing £249 plus VAT instead of the combined £385 plus VAT cost of the separate packages.
(Curiously, Schema was originally developed by Acorn
but transferred to Clares Micro Supplies as a consequence of a decision by Acorn to stop developing applications software itself.
)
An enhanced ''Impression Publisher Plus'' product became available in 1994, adding support for various professional publishing features such as Open Pre-Press Interface (OPI) for the substitution of high resolution images when typesetting,
Encapsulated PostScript
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a Document Structuring Convention (DSC) conforming PostScript document format usable as a graphics file format. The format was developed as early as 1987 by John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Adobe, ...
(EPS) and
Desktop Colour Separation (DCS), along with other enhancements such as a new colour selection tool supporting spot, process and tint colour handling.
The price of Publisher Plus was £299 plus VAT, with an upgrade from Publisher costing £130 plus VAT, with the additional features producing a product with "
Quark
A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly o ...
-like facilities at a substantially lower price". The other enhancements were regarded as "nice extra touches", although a "proper" undo option was still absent, and other noted frustrations with Publisher's user interface remained.
A 32-bit conversion and improvement project initiated in 2003 was named ''Impression-X''.
Impact
Impression II was adopted as part of the solution employed by
Acorn User
''Acorn User'' magazine was founded by Acorn Computers in 1982, contract-published by Addison-Wesley, to coincide with the launch of the BBC Micro. It covered the range of Acorn home computers, the BBC Micro and Atom at first and later the Elect ...
magazine as "the first newstrade magazine to 'go live' with Archimedes-based DTP", having already produced editorial supplements using software running on the Archimedes platform. Computer Concepts LaserDirect and Integrex ColourCel printers were used alongside A440, and subsequently A540, computers.
The experiences from this adoption exercise were apparently fed back to Acorn and Computer Concepts to inform further product refinements, with the editorial team stating a belief that a similar solution marketed as a product would be "a serious alternative to Apple Macintosh and PC-based systems" in the broader desktop publishing market.
Acorn User reverted to using the Macintosh platform when the title was acquired by
Europress
Europress was a British magazine and software publisher based in Adlington, near Macclesfield, Cheshire. Their magazine publishing business was previously known as Database Publications. The software division was renamed in 1999 to Actualize.
His ...
, this mostly due to working practices at its new owner, with any "weaknesses" in Impression II said to be mostly resolved by the introduction of Impression Publisher and accompanying OPI functionality.
However, a renewed effort saw complete issues of Acorn User once again produced using Acorn-based technology in 1995,
starting with a redesign exercise in December 1994 and gradually moving to a Risc PC-based solution employing Impression Publisher Plus.
Other professional users adopted Impression II and direct-drive printing hardware on the Acorn platform. For example, the Journal of Physiology, published through Cambridge University Press by the Physiological Society at Cambridge University, employed A540 and A5000 machines augmented with State Machine graphics cards in conjunction with Calligraph TQ1200 printers, with these peripherals being general competitors with Computer Concepts' own ColourCard and LaserDirect products, although the TQ1200 as an A3 printer had no direct competitor from Computer Concepts' own range.
The software was one of two packages recommended for use in
primary teaching in the 1996 book ''Opportunities for English in the Primary School''.
It has been considered one of the most important applications in the history of the platform.
Development
Impression was originally developed concurrently with Computer Concepts' own operating system, Impulse, during the period when
Arthur
Arthur is a common male given name of Brittonic languages, Brythonic origin. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. The etymology is disputed. It may derive from the Celtic ''Artos'' meaning “Bear”. An ...
was the operating system delivered with Archimedes series machines, with Computer Concepts looking to offer Impulse as a replacement. During this period, only three developers worked on Impression while "everyone else
n the companywas working on Impulse". This operating system was never delivered, but Acorn perceived it as enough of a threat that pre-releases of
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archim ...
- Acorn's successor to Arthur - were apparently withheld from the Impression developers for competitive reasons. Later, having been invited to collaborate on the Advance integrated suite with Acorn, various visual aspects of Computer Concepts' products, notably the "3D box style", were adopted as part of Acorn's own visual style for RISC OS 3. The software itself was written using the BBC Basic assembler, assembled in pieces and linked using a dedicated linker.
A project to produce a fully 32-bit compliant version (compatible with the
Iyonix PC
The Iyonix PC was an Acorn-clone personal computer sold by Castle Technology and Iyonix Ltd between 2002 and 2008. According to news site ''Slashdot'', it was the first personal computer to use Intel's XScale processor. It ran .
History
...
and later ARM hardware) was announced by X-Ample Technology in 2003.
This was named Impression-X.
In 2004 it was explained that the process of 32-bitting was being complicated partly because of "the massive number of optimisation and 'tricks'
Computer Concepts used".
In 2005, ''
Drobe
''Drobe'' (also referred to as ''Drobe Launchpad'') was a computing news web site with a focus on the operating system. Its archived material was retained online, curated by editor Chris Williams until late 2020.
History
''Drobe'' was found ...
'' editor Chris Williams suggested handing the project over to another party to complete.
After only another 10 years, Impression-X was released in May 2015, and is now available from the
PlingStore.
Features
A document loader for Impression files was included with the 2.60 release of desktop publishing application
Ovation Pro in 2000.
[Previous ''Drobe'' article publishe]
24 November 2000
/ref>
The software was copy protected
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.
Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
via a dongle
A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality.
In computing, the term was initially synonym ...
. However, the reliance on a dongle could be removed from Impression II (and ArtWorks) with a personalised version of the software issued on Computer Concepts' receipt of the dongle and an associated upgrade fee. The personalised version used various identifying characteristics of particular computer models and was only offered, at least initially, for A5000, A4, A3010, A3020 and A4000 owners.
References
{{RISC OS
RISC OS software
Proprietary software