RISC OS Developments acquire Impression family and release Impression Style for free

RISC OS Developments is pleased to announce that it has taken over ownership of the Impression family of products from previous holders X-Ample Technology BV.

By bringing oversight of the Impression family back to the UK, RISC OS Developments intend to have a much closer relationship with on-going Impression development, driving things forwards wherever possible. Existing Impression-X lead Richard Keefe is on-board with the new arrangements and is continuing development of the flagship product.

RISC OS Developments will be assisting Richard and providing additional resources that were not previously available, with the goal of delivering more updates and improvements as soon as possible.

Since taking over the Impression brand in late summer 2019 (ie. a couple of months ago), RISC OS Developments has already been able to deliver a newly-revised and updated 370 page manual for Impression-X (and the rest of the Impression family), updated and released the Tutorial guide, and (as you’ll see below), updated and release a new edition of Impression Style, and ensured that development is restarted with solid plans for the future.

Existing Impression-X customer should feel re-assured that development will continue as normal, and they will benefit from new resources such as the manual at no extra cost.

Style for Free!
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Historically there were three editions of Impression that existed simultaneously – Style, Publisher and Publisher+. Whilst Impression-X now replaces Publisher Plus (which itself contains relatively minor changes from Publisher), we have decided to make the Impression Style product freely available to everyone.

In researching and updating the manual, we were surprised to see just how comprehensive Impression Style was/is – a veritable bargain at its original 116ukp pricetag – no wonder it was so popular!

If you haven’t tried out Impression Style (and even if you have), we’d strongly suggest you check out this new addition available on !Store and the RISC OS Developments website.

The new edition of Impression Style includes a comprehensive Tutorial guide (65+ pages) and online help. It has been revised and updated with several 32bit-safe support modules to ensure better compatibility with modern desktop machines, although the main program still needs Aemulor on RISC OS 5 systems. There are some cosmetic enhancements and revisions to (32bit-safe) Mail Merge.

For users of modern machines, colour issues have been resolved for correct operation on Titanium and other systems using RGB colour ordering.

We believe this to be a definitive edition of the program, which now works on all RISC OS machines 3.50 and higher. Maybe 3.10+, but we don’t have machines to test.

Note that whilst RISC OS 5 users will still need to download Aemulor (free), all of the Impression components (including !CCshared elements) have been updated to behave cleanly on 32bit systems and only require Aemulor when needed. This means no more spurious error messages when !CCshared is seen by the filer! Also, Aemulor is used transparently, so as long as you have Aemulor present, Style will handle modules in 26bit and 32bit space correctly without further issue.

On 26bit systems such as RiscPCs or VirtualAcorn, the software will run un-aided as all the program will adapt transparently to the environment it is run on.

Come and talk at the show
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We’ll be talking Impression at the London show, so don’t hesitate to come and chat with us about it. We look forward to sharing more news in due course.

we have decided to make the Impression Style product freely available to everyone.

Handy for reading some of those old documents that people did in Impression format.
Some can be read by Ovation Pro – depending on format used – but a working copy of Style will be useful to more than just Impression users.

Nice one…

Since you mention OvPro’s Impression reader, I think we’d be quite happy to share source with anyone interested in improving such things, or even just writing importers for other apps. Obviously code would still be under NDA, but we’d not pose any limitations on what other devs could do with it. There’s very little to be gained in being secretive and protective of such things.

Also, major kudos to Chris Hall for his work with us on the new manual for the Impression family. That was a big project, and couldn’t have been achieved this quickly without his effort.

Few comments on the file format. The Ovation Pro Impression loader source code is available from:

https://www.davidpilling.com/wiki/index.php/Impression

Probably could be made into some useful stuff for Impression – XML export or whatever.

There was ISTR another Impression file loader that someone did.

The problem with my loader was not so much not understanding Impression files as Ovation Pro not having exactly the same features as Impression. That is why there are shortcomings in loading Impression files.

Having said that I did draw a line and not attempt to load particularly ancient Impression file formats.

My memory is that there were corrupt Impression documents around – writing something to spot and fix them seemed a nice idea.

Alongside the newly released Style is an Impression Newsletter, intended to be a regular thing. You can download it here and it is included in the free download of Impression Style now available from !Store.

That’s great news. Impression was, and continues to be an important app for RISC OS. Big thumbs up to everyone who was involved in making this happen.
Nice.

Good point, Chris – I forgot to mention the NewsLetter :)

We’re trying to get the ROD website updated today with stuff (time permitting) so I’ll mention that again to the guys.

We’re trying to get the ROD website updated today with stuff (time permitting) so I’ll mention that again to the guys.

Loads of free time – it’s not like you have a show coming up at the weekend or anything like that… :)

Hehe, and I’m down in London a day earlier this year, as I have meetings booked for the Friday, so even less time to work here!

If you haven’t tried out Impression Style (and even if you have), we’d strongly suggest you check out this new addition available on !Store and the RISC OS Developments website.

This is great news Andrew. Are you still planning to put it on the ROD website?

That’s the plan, but we’ve all been a touch busy after the show, so the website hasn’t seen much action.

Full support of Impression is one thing that may encourage me to run a RISC OS machine once more – preferably without the need for Aemulor. Would it run on a Pi – I have lots of those around?

I did bring two RPCs and an Iyonix with me when I left UK in 2007, but the RPCs have never come out of storage, and the Iyonix has only been turned on a couple of times in twelve years.

The other App I miss greatly is StrongEd – if only that would run on Linux!

RPCs and an Iyonix with me when I left UK in 2007, but the RPCs have never come out of storage,

I would highly recommend that for that length of risc pc storage that you open them up and remove the battery from the motherboard ASAP.

I would highly recommend that for that length of risc pc storage that you open them up and remove the battery from the motherboard ASAP.

Definitely – if you really want to keep them running. Replace the battery with a flying lead to an offboard battery holder, and put a rechargeable battery in that. I did that to mine many years ago, but gave them to the Cambridge Computer Museum (or whatever it’s called) a few years ago. I don’t run a computer museum; I run a couple of Raspberry Pis.

Full support of Impression is one thing that may encourage me to run a RISC OS machine once more – preferably without the need for Aemulor. Would it run on a Pi – I have lots of those around?

It runs very well on my Pi 3B+. It’s a 26bit application and that’s the way it will stay but Aemulor is free for the Pi and runs it seamlessly. Impression is the free version but Impression-X is the version that is being 32-bitted at the moment. My understanding is that a lot of it is now 32-bit but it’s not all there yet, so Aemulor is still required for now. But at least you a choice and you can try Impression on the Pi for free.

I did bring two RPCs and an Iyonix with me when I left UK in 2007, but the RPCs have never come out of storage, and the Iyonix has only been turned on a couple of times in twelve years.

Second hand RISC OS stuff is going for a small fortune these days on eBay. You might consider offloading the old stuff and buying a brand new ArmBook from RComp. You should have plenty of change left over!

Second hand RISC OS stuff is going for a small fortune these days on eBay.

I really don’t understand why; but I rather now regret disposing of several functioning RiscPCs, A440s and A5000s, not to mention an A4…hey ho, that’s life, water under the bridge and all that.

Whoops, I appear to have hijacked Andrew’s topic! If I was still in UK, he’d probably kill me!
I’ll create a new thread for my reminiscences! … here

Hi Peter, good to hear from you! :)

Impression is the free version but Impression-X is the version that is being 32-bitted at the moment. My understanding is that a lot of it is now 32-bit but it’s not all there yet

The last I heard from Richard was that he was concentrating on fixing bugs and that 32bitting was only about 10% done.

Alongside the newly released Style is an Impression Newsletter, intended to be a regular thing. You can download it here and it is included in the free download of Impression Style now available from !Store.

I intend to issue the second Newsletter for Impression on 18th February and to bring copies with me to the South West show.

The second newsletter for Impression can be downloaded here

Impression-X version 5.799 Dev (06-Mar-2020) is currently being rolled out to subscribers as update 4c. It seems appropriate that it should be in users’ hands before the Ides of March (15th).

Idus Martiae was a day in the Roman calendar that corresponds to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts. More familiar to many is the Shakespearian quote ‘beware the Ides of March’: despite an apocryphal warning from a soothsayer Julius Caesar was indeed assassinated on the ides of March – March 15 – in the year 44 B.C. some 2064 years ago (or 2063 years ago if the numbering, which obviously did not happen contemporaneously, did not include a year zero A.D.).

‘Beware the Ides of March’ also seems to be as relevant today, at least this year, as the Government decides when to start constraint of social mobility.

I shall be issuing another newsletter towards the end of March describing what has changed in some detail.