Impression-X

What a shame. In which case the correct strategy would have been to:

Broadcast a PrintTypeOdd message with filetype &BC5 and the name of the doc as type 18.
If that bounces, StartTask Alias$@PrintType_BC5 yourself.

However, my copy of Impression fails to acknowledge the PrintTypeOdd even though it does go on to print the document, so it bounces and then prints anyway.

So you’ll simply have to ensure Impression is running, and then send it a plain old PrintTypeOdd as a type 17 and then proceed as you have been. That works here.

I have just got batch printing of all the Impression documents in a directory to PDFs working. With the start conditions that Impression is not running, the postscript 3 printer drivers are set to produce the file printout/ps in a particular location on the same drive as the source documents (not sure whether this constraint is required) MultiTask version 7.60 (not yet released) is running showing its icon bar icon:

1. Click on the MultiTask icon bar icon, opening a blankish window.
2. Check that Aemulor is running if necessary.
3. Click on the PS3 printer driver icon to ensure the file ‘postscript/ps; is produced in that directory.
4. Drag the file ’postscript/ps’ to the MultiTask window.
5. Drag an ImpDoc file form tother directory the MultiTask window.
6. Open a menu over the MultiTask window
7. Drag the BC5 save icon onto the print driver icon.
8. Now all the files of type BC5 and all the Impression Application Files in tother directory will be printed, one by one, as PDFs in that directory.

Impression replies to a PrintTypeOdd message from an application with a PrintTypeKnown message before communicating with the printing system.

Problem at the moment is that application type files and the first BC5 file to be printed start up Impression to print the document (closing it down first if it has already been started by MultiTask) and therefore no PrintTypeKnown message is received which is spotted after a long time delay (currently 50s).

Starting up an application style document to print it seems to be done by:

REPEAT
  SYS "OS_GBPB",12,ccsd$,fbuf,1,icsd%,1500 TO ,,,n%,icsd%
  IF fbuf!16=2 AND ftx%=&BC5 THEN
    SYS "OS_File",17,ccsd$+"."+FNgetname(fbuf+24)+".!DocData" TO ftxt%
  ELSE
    ftxt%=0
  ENDIF
UNTIL [file or valid Imp directory found]
IF ftx%=&BC5 AND fbuf!16=2 THEN
  IF imptask%<>0 THEN
    block%!0=40
    block%!12=0
    block%!16=0:REM Quit
    block%!20=imptask%
    SYS "Wimp_SendMessage",17,block%,block%!20
    imptask%=0
  ENDIF
  SYS "Wimp_StartTask","<Impression$Path> -print "+ccsd$+"."+FNgetname(fbuf+24) TO imptask%
  AwaitAck%=TRUE:REM set to FALSE on receipt of PrintTypeKnown message or 50s timeout 
  REM Once AwaitAck% has been set to FALSE, rename 'printout/ps' to leafname/ps 
  REM then use printpdf13 to produce leafname/pdf and look for next directory entry

There are also predictable error messages that would arise from user errors, that are not trapped, such as ‘cannot rename printout/ps to leafname/ps, file already exists’, ‘Impression is already running’ etc. I’ll tinker a bit more before releasing it. Now available from !Store and my web site.

Click on the image below to see a full size version.

Brilliant! If ‘MultiTask’ doesn’t have this icon, it ought to…

I know there was talk of Impression-X 5.79 coming out in March of this year – did it happen? I haven’t heard anything about it.

Impression 5.799 (06-Mar 2020) was sent to subscribers on 13 March as release 4c, just after the second Impression Newsletter had been issued. Perhaps I should do another newsletter …

The version on !Store is being packagaed (so only 5.78 is currently there) but isn’t quite ready yet.

Impression 5.799 (06-Mar 2020) was sent to subscribers on 13 March as release 4c, just after the second Impression Newsletter had been issued.

Good news!

Perhaps I should do another newsletter …

Yes please. Information on Impression is so hard to come by. Your newsletters are great.

our newsletters are great.

Agree and some other great work put in by Chris on the PDF manual as well so a big thanks from me as well.

This is partially my fault. There was quite a bit of work to do to assemble a full release for !Store, and I’ve only half-completed it. I wanted to make sure it was up to the same standard as the !Style2019 release I did last year. I would say there’s a good afternoon worth of work to go over everything with a fine tooth comb to make sure it all works properly and well together, and everything is up to date. Finding the time has been the issue.

For example, tomorrow I’m faced with the dilemma of (for example) tackling this, or packaging Iris for release to OBrowser customers, oh and I need to build a new Messenger Pro release too, and sort new OS builds for ARMX6 (etc)…

You get the idea!

Does anyone have a current email address for Richard Keefe? The impression-x.co.uk one bounced the last time I tried.

email address for Richard Keefe

A recent email from him (19 June) was from impressionx72 a/t gmail d/o/t com

Impression 5.799 (06-Mar 2020) was sent to subscribers on 13 March as release 4c, just after the second Impression Newsletter had been issued. Perhaps I should do another newsletter …

The version on !Store is being packagaed (so only 5.78 is currently there) but isn’t quite ready yet.

Andrew has just confirmed that packaging is complete, !Store now has version 5.799 (06-Mar-2020).

And it includes both a Tutorial and a 370 page User Manual both as digital PDFs.