What is ClarisImpact 1.0CDv3?

Over the years, integrated software has been the subject of so much marketing hype that it’s easy to lose sight of its real potential. But when you think about it, the concept of consolidating applications to address a common purpose is a wonderful idea. And that’s the key to ClarisImpact, a product designed to facilitate organizing and communicating information.

ClarisImpact integrates business graphing, project management, object-oriented drawing, word processing, and presentation functions. It lets you organize and illustrate data with a variety of charts and graphs, add graphical embellishments, incorporate textual descriptions, and disseminate the finished product as a paper-based report and visual presentation.

ClarisImpact blends its components into an exceptionally versatile graphics-production environment that is significantly more approachable and far more comprehensible than is juggling a similar collection of dedicated programs. So you don’t have to be a graphics professional to master ClarisImpact quickly.

ClarisImpact lets you produce three document types. Report documents, which you produce in a word processing-style window, emphasize textual information and are appropriate for projects that require paginated output, such as business plans, annual reports, and newsletter articles.

You build draw documents in a MacDraw-like work space where it’s possible to position graphic objects and text elements with precision. Draw documents are especially suited to projects that can grow beyond single-page boundaries, such as organization charts and project time lines.

Presentation documents are collections of sequential images built on a template or master slide. Naturally, these documents are intended for producing slides, overheads, and computer-driven productions. However, ClarisImpact provides the same tool palette and attributes bar regardless of document type, so you can always do the same kind of graphics and text work.

From the tool palette, you select the graphic models — organization charts, flowcharts, time lines (Gantt charts), calendars, outlines, data tables, and data graphs — that are the core of ClarisImpact. Select a model and drag out a frame in the document window, and that graphic model is available for immediate use. For example, when you choose an organization chart model, you can enter information in the formatted boxes of a basic hierarchy and, by pushing buttons on the model, alter and expand the organizational structure as necessary. Menus and tool bars, which contain the particular functions pertaining to each graphic model, toggle on or off as you select models.

ClarisImpact’s graphic models are intelligent, so you can use them as more than illustrations. You can organize your schedule with a calendar model or manage a project with a time-line chart. For example, when you edit a time-line element to reflect a project delay, ClarisImpact recomputes the schedule of linked tasks and realigns the chart elements to reflect the alterations.

These models also apply some intelligence to the graphic elements themselves. For instance, when you reposition symbols in a flowchart, the program calculates the best routing for the connecting lines and automatically rearranges them. In addition, you can edit data graphs bidirectionally — change the data in the table, and the graph adjusts to match; reconfigure the graph, and the data updates automatically.

Overall, ClarisImpact’s collection of charting and graphing models covers the business-graphics requirements of most users. Although they won’t supplant dedicated programs, the individual models offer more than sufficient functionality. Many users will never need more.

An extensive implementation of styles makes it easy to customize graphs and charts. Similar to the styles functions found in word processors, ClarisImpact’s styles control every attribute that can be applied to a model, such as the type of graph, text size and font, colors and fill patterns applied to elements, and overall layout of the model. You can define, save, and apply styles either globally or to individual model elements. A filtering function lets you apply a subset of a style. The program comes with an extensive collection of styles ready for use or customization, and these canned styles share familial characteristics, making it easy to change from one layout to another or to combine several model types that share a graphic look.

Drawing tools can be torn off the tool palette for use with any ClarisImpact document. For the most part, they are fairly basic. Notable, however, are the Bezigon tool, which draws Bézier-curve shapes, and the Note tool, which produces editable Post-it-style notes you can attach anywhere on a document. In addition, a second tear-off palette holds 16 shapes, including polygons, stars, and arrows.

ClarisImpact’s graphics libraries are accessible from floating palettes containing individual thumbnail images, which you can drag and drop. You can add graphics to existing libraries and create your own libraries. Library graphics traveling to the page pass through the Clipboard rather than a separate channel, so you must be careful not to overwrite the Clipboard’s contents. Still, the library interface is well implemented, and the program comes with more than 3000 clip art objects.

Text handling is generally fine. When building report documents, ClarisImpact behaves like a well-appointed word processor that includes such page-layout features as columnar formatting, text wrap around graphic objects, and footnoting. Similar text-handling features are available in text-object frames created with the text tool in draw and presentation documents. You can link these frames to flow text over several locations.

You can also use text frames within report documents, as you might with a caption inside a balloon graphic object. But more complex juxtapositions, such as flowing text over linked frames inside that balloon — admittedly an uncommon situation — can confuse the program as to where the text goes. Still, ClarisImpact’s integration of text and graphics is usually excellent.

ClarisImpact supports QuickTime, so you can include video clips in computer-generated presentations. However, the program should offer the ability to visually sort through a presentation using thumbnails. The name-oriented slide manager is flexible enough, but it requires that you christen each slide with a distinctive name and retain a mental picture of its content — not a problem with a half-dozen slides but cumbersome if you’re producing a gross.

Program documentation is well organized, readable, and thorough. Novice users should have no difficulties getting started. And ClarisImpact runs even on a Mac Plus with 2MB of RAM. Mindful of such minimalist users, Claris has included a good selection of monochrome styles and clip art libraries.

Taken individually, ClarisImpact’s components naturally suffer in comparison with dedicated programs. But the program’s outstanding integration offers versatility that dedicated programs are pressed to match. And the components mesh so well that each enhances its companions, much as the members of a well-drilled basketball squad do. By emphasizing teamwork, ClarisImpact realizes the potential of software integration.

Martinez, Carlos Domingo. (June 1994). ClarisImpact 1.0. Macworld. (pg. 67, 69).

Download ClarisImpact 1.0CDv3 for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II