[3] Originally, the application appears to have been developed for Acorn's then-current operating system, Arthur, as a ROM-based product,[4] 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.
One noted omission was a convenient mailmerge function,[12] although conventional word processing features such as automatic contents and index generation were also omitted from the product.
[14] 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.
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.
[18] Impression Publisher was also bundled with the separate Equasor and TableMate tools to take advantage of the OLE support,[19] 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.
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.
[27] 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.
[29] However, a renewed effort saw complete issues of Acorn User once again produced using Acorn-based technology in 1995,[30] starting with a redesign exercise in December 1994 and gradually moving to a Risc PC-based solution employing Impression Publisher Plus.
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.
[35] A project to produce a fully 32-bit compliant version (compatible with the Iyonix PC and later ARM hardware) was announced by X-Ample Technology in 2003.
[40] A document loader for Impression files was included with the 2.60 release of desktop publishing application Ovation Pro in 2000.