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Corel

Sneak Preview of CorelDraw 9 for Linux 110

Posted by Hemos from the vector-drawing dept.
A reader writes "Michael Hall of LinuxPlanet wrote a pretty nifty review of CorelDraw 9 for Linux. He's a mondo GIMP fan, but he's still saying nice things about CorelDraw, kinda sorta."
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Sneak Preview of CorelDraw 9 for Linux More

Sneak Preview of CorelDraw 9 for Linux

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  • I think the biggest issue with Corel's latest group of products is the fact that they are using Wine to make the ports work. This leads to sluggish performance and even worse flaky behavior that people dealing with big art projects are not likely to want to endure.

    However, I do not believe this whole GIMP versus Draw stuff is really fair. It is as many readers have pointed out a completely different tool. In addition the pricing seems pretty comparitive to the Windows versions.

    As a community would it not be better to support the people coming together and making products for our favorite OS as opposed to busting on them for not giving their products away? I mean eventually I am going to have to get the WordPerfect suite to get my wife completely off the Windows products and finally claim back the Windows 95 machine so it can take its rightfull place as a linux box.

  • Troll bridge, do not cross ;-) (Score:4)

    by Ian Schmidt ( 6899 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @08:17AM (#989270)
    Rumors of Wine's slowness are greatly exaggerated. The latest version plays Half-Life and Counterstrike at high frame rates on my TNT2 card with the latest NVIDIA drivers :-)


  • I've been testing coreldraw for linux for the past 3 months, I've also used corel on windows, photoshop, illustrator, gimp you name it. the product is good, it's stable and works with equal efficiency as the windows app. performance is NOT hindred despite the wine stuff. I have been dying for a usable ( no offence gimp) vector/raster program for a while, and this is it. I have seen corel come up through the years, despight critisism and they have a good product. the usability is inate, functional and efficient.

    what makes a graphics program a good one is not so much capability and functionalty but usability. it should be as inate as a pencil on paper, for that is what graphic artists. want. this allows fluidity of creation.

    I work with about 20 different graphic designers a day, all shouting quark, free hand, page maker and many are impressed with how far corel has come.
  • Corel has always had financial problems. This has nothing to do with them focusing on linux. If anything they have gained a few ounces of respect because of it. Cowpland is a risk taker, always has been, and Corel has NEVER been the powerhouse they think they are.


  • this is great, for a low end production environment, I can set up 5 workstations running corel, and with the money I save from linux, I can buy a few other stations. thats money, and thats important.

  • I read the reviews with mixed feelings. I am not a graphics designer or anything like that, yet I often use Corel Draw! and PhotoShop for various things.

    Corel Draw! is at its best when it comes to vector graphics and the bundled, vast collection of clipart. Very cool, very efficient, very fast, and relatively easy to use. I've been a Corel user since version 3.0 shipped, and love it dearly. I wish I could say the same thing about Corel PhotoPaint or their end-user documentation for both products. The latter SUCK.

    The UI, the manuals, the tutorials, and overall the PhotoPaint programs are extremely hard to understand and follow. I haven't figured out how to do even simple things in it, and the manuals are possibly the worst documentation I've ever read (counting some WinModem manuals). I use Adobe PhotoShop for all my bitmap graphics now.

    To conclude: I use Corel Draw! for vector graphics, and Adobe PhotoShop for bitmap graphics. I owned a license to the latter for about 9 months and I can do my image conversions, filters, enhancements, layers, etc. without problems. I have yet to open the manual.

    Since both products retail for $300 or more (depending on where you get them), I'd strongly recommend people to only go to Corel if they have a need for vector graphics. Stick to the Gimp/XV/etc. for bitmaps or wait for Linux/PhotoShop.

    Cheers!

    E
  • Also, no users of Illustrator or Freehand are going to jump to Linux when CorelDraw arrives. It'll not even register a blip on their radar screens...

    I'm not talking about the graphic artists under Windows, I'm talking about the ones already using Linux. I hate rebooting to play games as it is, but I don't play games for a living. If I did graphic design for a living, I might learn to use Gimp/CorelDraw a little better so I wouldn't constantly be rebooting to use Photoshop. Linux needs more killer apps like the Gimp to successfully compete with other graphic platforms like Mac.
    -Antipop
  • Posted by 11223:

    No, IANAT. I've used WPO2000 and it is slow. The reason Half-Life is at such a high framerate is because it's using your hard-accel OpenGL. The GDI and widget-set emulation for WINE is horridly slow.
  • I went out and bought WPO 2000 for linux. While I have noticed that the initial startup is slow, the rest is not even on a 366 mobile celeron with 32mb RAM. While I will admit I have had a few minor problems, they did not seem to be issues with wine. The main one was a socket file that was not deleted properly when the app shut down. I went in deleted the file and now it works fine. I've had other errors with Gnumeric that had the same end result: the program would not open. I solved them and moved on. I don't knock Gnumeric, because I had a few minor issues in first setting it up, and I feel the same about WPO. Keep up the good work Corel.
  • We've heard a lot that Corel has been running WP2k under wine, rather than recompiling with libwine. Does anyone know why they wouldn't recompile with libwine? Sure, it might be more of a hassle, but I've always heard that this was the preferred way of porting with Wine. It's LGPL too, so there's no problem with linking to it dynamically. Anybody have an insight?
    --JRZ
  • Posted by 11223:

    WordPerfect Office 2000 did that - the program you run (wordperfect, etc) are shell scripts that call wine on a .exe file.
  • Posted by 11223:

    It's trivial for them to link with libwine - but anyway, does getting a foot in the door excuse making a product that's slower than StarOffice? At this time, don't buy it.
  • I currently use CorelDRAW 3.0 in Linux through Wine, and it's quite useable. It runs at about the same speed as it would in Windows, and only seems to run into problems when I try and run it in `Managed' mode.
  • I heard a rumor that the Winelibs have some minor issues that kept WP2K from working correctly. Corel WANTS to compile with Winelib but they'd rather have a fully functioning Office Suite running on Wine instead.
  • I'm surprised that it's taking this long to decide to port distiller. They already have Acrobat Reader for Linux. I would think that the Reader would be more complex of a port due to the nature of displaing graphics on X versus Mac or Windows. All distiller does is convert Postscript to PDF. Not something I think would reply on a lot of Winodws libraries to complete.

    But it's good to see that we'll have Distiller now. Yet one more program that I won't have to boot into Windows for. :-)

  • >CorelDraw! is a masterwork of Graphics editing. There is not a better product in the same catagory.

    Eh? Where'd you get that from? Have you ever used Illustrator or Freehand?
  • Corel Draw is very, very nice. It's not just a filter-based photo editor, but a suite of programs: an object-based drawing program, a bitmap-based paint program, a simple 3D modeler for doing 3D fonts and such, some utilities to assist with scanning, and a *large* collection of clip art and fonts.

    Both the draw and paint packages are well done. The latter is right up there with Photoshop, IMO, but the interface is less cluttered. The whole suite is effectively Photoshop + Illustrator for half the price. This is well worth the $$$ for graphic artists.
  • I don't think that everyone that releases software for Linux has to 'get' the Free Software or Open Source ideals. Why should they? Not everyone that runs Linux understands them.

    I do believe that it is OK for companies to develop for or port to Linux just as they would Windows or the Mac. You can't force your specific set of ideals on them, if you could, no one would be allowed to run Linux. Well OK, maybe Linus could run it...

    Plus, it's a bad move to scare off everyone that doesn't subscribe to the ideals. You do want software to be available for Linux don't you?

    Refrag
  • Rumors of Wine's slowness are greatly exaggerated.

    Yes and no. Recent versions of Wine run Word 97 with some slowdown, but not enough to be a problem. However, I agree with the review. CorelDRAW 9 beta 2 is unacceptably sluggish. It's better than beta 1, which gives some hope for the final release version, but they've got a long way to go. Note that AFAIK CorelDRAW isn't a Windows application running under WINE, it's a native Linux application that's been compiled against Winelib.

  • Re:Corel and Open Source (Score:3)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:28AM (#989288)
    I used to think the same thing, until I saw them contributing to the Wine project. Now they've also put together a great distro (or so I hear) and are bringing new applications to Linux.

    Say what you want about their motivations or business savvy; they're definitely contributing, regardless. Wine has gone a long way, no one has forced them to take any patches, but many of them needed to be done. (the "boring" stuff--it might help you run MS-Word instead of StarCraft :)

    I'm sure Corel will provide support for their products, too. (now that people charge for that...) Heck, they might do that for their distro, I don't know...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Corel are planning to release Ventura Publisher for Linux in the near future.
  • It's looking likely that Corel is facing going under.

    It should be obvious to everyone what it will mean to Linux if/when the first major company to heavily invest in the platform has lost too much money to survive.

    ________
    1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"

  • This is absolutely excellent news! Even with their troubles, Corel can put out good software for Linux.

    I use the Corel suite of graphics programs 99% of the time. I don't wish to pick a fight, people are allowed to use Adobe, but I personally prefer Corel very much over Adobe and Macromedia.

    CorelDRAW/PhotoPAINT are one of the few reasons I still boot into Windows, so when they first announced it I was very happy. Now I'm even happier. And the fact the PhotoPAINT will be free is kickass.

    Plus, if it's based on the Windows code, Adobe fans can use PhotoPaint for Linux to use their PhotoShop plugins (which are 100% compatible). So this is good news for everyone!

  • Re:Corel's okay but... (Score:4)

    by Bad_CRC ( 137146 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:33AM (#989292)
    "where is adobe?"

    p ress release [adobe.com]

    they are coming along. Just very slowly.

    ________
    1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"

  • Or several other plans assume for a minute that they GPL it. Several tracks follow. Selling boxed sets with dead tree docs and support is a good idea. Selling support packages is a good idea. Selling add ons as the original post mentions. All kinds of support options come to mind. Make really good dead tree docs, this is a *good* thing. Install support. Feature support. Training for help desks to provide support. Possibly helping users find/make bug fixes for problems. Maybe a sort of a middleman between all the scary *Nix hackers and a button down type IT manager. Get people to pay to let them maintain a install. They could really sell this and end up doing much better than they are now cause to be honest right now they are sucking wind.

  • Re: CorelDraw is not GIMP (Score:3)

    by Silver A ( 13776 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:36AM (#989294)
    The Gimp's real competition is Corel's Photo-Paint, which, interestingly enough, will be available for free once released, or at least so says the article. Evidently Corel feels that the Gimp is good enough a free competitor to make selling Photo-Paint alone useless!

    If the GIMP's real competition is Photo-Paint, then the GIMP has already won. Photo-Paint has all the ease of learning and use of Photoshop, with all the features of older versions of Paint Shop Pro. [jasc.com] Even in the Windows World, Photo-Paint is almost always acquired with CorelDRAW. It's just not worth getting separately. Someone doing only web graphics, or editing and printing their digital photos, can do quite well with Paint Shop Pro or Ulead's PhotoImpact, and anyone doing serious pre-press work will still want Photoshop.



  • Gimp and the Corel draw package ( photopaint included) are simular in capability there is however one huuuuge difference, Gimp is terrible hard to become proficcient at. reason being it is not inate the menues are not really context menues. if I right click on a vector I only want vector options not one hug list of everything. they are not catigorised together. I have tried to use gimp and I hate it. I am already proficient and illustrator, photoshop, freehand and corel you name it. I love gimp trust me on that, hoever I would never use it in an environment where production and speed is important
  • Agreed! It would be great to get Canvas (and its dual nature of vector / bitmap). I had the same problem with framemaker that you did with canvas (I didn't even try the Canvas download after hearing so many horror stories ...)

    With Canvas and Framemaker, Linux becomes a decent DTP platform. Yes, Quark and Adobe are more widely accepted, and No, ad agencies and big magazines won't go out and immediately replace all their systems with Penguin Computing boxes running Slackware and Framemaker, but affordable professional DTP would be attractive to a lot of people ...

    (Aside: Wouldn't it be great if Sketch or other free vector program could somehow be merged with The GIMP, or designed so one document could be divided into layers independently 'owned' by one of these apps?).)

    timothy
  • while CorelDraw is definitely the king of vector drawing programs and one of the missing key apps still holding back Linux
    Sorry, gotta disagree. The king of the vector drawing programs is Illustrator. I'm a Freehand man myself and its better than Coreldraw too. Of course the likelihood of either of these programs ever being ported is about nil.
  • Are you kidding? The way that Adobe sees software piracy as "all of our fault," I think it would be a cold day in hell before they opened up their source. They make incredible programs that they base all of their revenue streams on - why would they go open source, anyway? I'd like to hear a discussion on that topic.


  • with the porting of mainstream graphics programs as corel ( and more I hope) there really needs to be more support for peripherals, eg, better scanning, digitizers, large format printers, color managment. without these it really doens't have much commercial viability.
  • Eh? Nobody (with a straight face) is asking them to open up the source. Applications for Linux don't have to be Open Source. CorelDraw isn't.
  • I thought that libwine was what they are doing. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

    --

  • Alright, this may sound stupid, and it probably is, but what's the difference between vector and pixel graphics, besides the obvious fact that one uses vectors and the other pixels? I mean, how does using vectors make life easier? I've been using pixels forever (I just got used to it), why should I switch? And good url references?
  • While we're talking about those screenshots, would anyone tell me (and possibly others) what window manager is that nice one?

    Yes, that would be Helix-Gnome.

    -Brent
  • However, while CorelDraw is definitely the king of vector drawing programs and one of the missing key apps still holding back Linux (no, xfig really does not cut it!)

    I think I have to disagree with you there on CorelDraw being the king of vecot drawing programs.

    I think that either Adobe Illustrator [adobe.com] or Macromedia Freehand [macromedia.com] are much better than CorelDraw. Sure, they may not be free (actually they're far from it), but it's like comparing Photoshop to The Gimp. The Gimp may be free and a very good program, but I don't think anyone working at a design agency is going to skip the next upgrade of Photoshop to use The Gimp.

    andy j. (who works for a design agency, and is using a linux right now, but will go back to the Mac to use the design programs)
  • While we're talking about those screenshots, would anyone tell me (and possibly others) what window manager is that nice one?
  • CorelDraw! is a masterwork of Graphics editing. There is not a better product in the same catagory. Corel Co. as a company is unfortunate to have lost a clear vision over the years and dabbles in everything. Dont confuse the two.

  • However, "damn." is not a complete sentence. It doesn't need capitalization, and it doesn't need the period at the end. I included the period only to seperate it from the next sentence.
  • As I understand it, the problem isn't with wine vs. libwine, it's with GCC. The sources still use template functions and similar complicated things which work under VC++ (or Borland, or whichever they use for Windows development) but aren't (or weren't at the time) supported 100% with GCC. So for now they have to compile under Windows and use Wine as a binary loader.

    (I work at Corel, but on a different project, and I haven't talked to anyone else here about it. As a matter of fact, I think I know this cause I read it here during the last go round. So don't take my word for this.)

    Joe

  • Resolution independence for one thing.
    You can apply effects to an object, and later change the object (usually), and the effect carries over. You can have textured objects,
    gradient objects, grouped objects.
    Objects can be lines, rectangles, ellipses, wacky custom polygons, text, pixel images.
    Objects can undergo transformations while the original object is remembered and the transformation is done when rendered.
    Also, file sizes tend to be much smaller (Depending on how complicated the image is).

    All in all, it's more useful for creating and editing object-oriented graphics, whereas Gimp/PhotoPaint/Photoshop are better for image manipulation, touching-up photos, etc.

    I once had a job making large posters for a government department. These posters were about 6x3', but the drafts could be printed to standard
    8x11" paper. I'd never even consider using a pixel-based program for that stuff.

  • I think that either Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand are much better than CorelDraw. Sure, they may not be free (actually they're far from it), but it's like comparing Photoshop to...

    I have both CorelDraw(9) and Illustrator(8) here. . CorelDraw is by far the best value, as you get a kick ass program like Photopaint included, along with gobs of fonts(>1000 ttf & type 1 fonts) for a fraction of the price of both Illustrator and Photopaint.

    The latest version of Draw also has many more features than Illustrator. When you buy from Adobe, you also get a very small amount of fonts compared to Corel's package.

    I know that Photoshop is probably superior to Photopaint in many respects, but Corel Photopaint will fit the bill for the average home or small business user. The Gimp can be worked with too, but it lack CMYK, so that makes it of limited use to people that make grpahics for non-Web purposes.

    Illustrator's ability to edit PDF's and it's excellent postscript compatiblity also must be considered.

    Can' wait for the CorelDraw Linux version to come out....maybe someday I can dump Windows forever..!

  • photoshop is considered a standard in it's market as well
  • What I'd really love is Illustrator for Linux. Anybody else with me?
  • wine isn't really that much slower.. i mean, it is, a little, but certainly not as bad as you make it sound. wine doesn't emulate OS layer calls, it replaces the OS layer with native code.

    in any case, just download the demo and see for yourself.

    but, of course, you knew that already.

    --
    blue

  • A commercial drawing program for Linux? Granted, is is by the company that develops Corel Linux, but still... what next? Photoshop? Director?

    If Microsoft is split (as I hope it is), then mabye we'll see its applications available under Linux -- and, like some of the Macintosh ports -- they just might not suck. What a concept. Has Bill figured this one out yet, or is he too busy belittling judges?

  • This is great news but Linux has a long way to go in the DTP market. However, since it's postscript support is so good, it will be a great contender to knock macs and WINNT out of the DTP workstation market. I'd like to do layout on a linux box.

    tcd004

    Here's my Microsoft Parody [lostbrain.com], where's yours?

  • I think Linux is still at the point where all commercial interest is important, and being watched by other companies.

    Corel hasn't had great programs from my experience.

    ________
    1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"

  • CorelDraw is not GIMP (Score:5)

    by jpatokal ( 96361 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:02AM (#989317) Homepage
    These CorelDraw-vs-GIMP comparisons are starting to annoy me. Repeat after me:

    CorelDraw is a vector drawing program.

    The Gimp is a bitmap drawing program.

    The Gimp cannot edit vector graphics; CorelDraw cannot edit bitmap graphics. The two products simply do not compete.

    The Gimp's real competition is Corel's Photo-Paint, which, interestingly enough, will be available for free once released, or at least so says the article. Evidently Corel feels that the Gimp is good enough a free competitor to make selling Photo-Paint alone useless! However, while CorelDraw is definitely the king of vector drawing programs and one of the missing key apps still holding back Linux (no, xfig really does not cut it!), Photo-Paint is far less popular than Adobe's PhotoShop. PhotoShop is one of the few reasons I still boot into WinNT, and I don't see this changing unless Adobe ports a recent version or Gimp 2.0 [linuxpower.org] makes good on its claims.

    Cheers,
    -j.

  • How about actually reading the article before posting a question about its contents? The answer can be found on the first page... doh!
  • A lot of money. The review states that Photo-paint will be a free download (ala WordPerfect 8) but the full suite (Draw and paint) will be released at a price "comparable to the Windows version."

    A quick check at CompUSA Online [compusa.com]shows that full suite price to be $1980.95 and upgrade price is $931.85.

    Um, thanks but no thanks. I'll take FREE over $2K price any day.

  • I'm buying Corel Draw as soon as possible. I have used xfig + the gimp to do business graphics for some time and can do everything I need but not easily. I really wish the Gimp had a vector graphics tool. There are just too many things that are easy to do with vectors that are a struggle with bitmaps.

    Anyone know if it will be possible to get a windows and linux version together for the same price?

  • damn. You caught me. I actually did read the article since then, and I feel pretty dirty about the whole thing.

  • CorelDRAW as a package isnt something you buy for the bitmap editing capabilities of Photopaint. As the reviewer rightly pointed out we already have the GIMP for that and it stacks up fairly well against the likes of photoshop so bitmap editing isnt the issue.

    The real good news in this article is that CDRAW itself has been ported (although I really agree with the reviewer about the downside of using WINE!) - Vector graphics packages have been conspicuous by their absence in the linux mainstream which reduces the linux desktop users ability to turn out precisely the kind of thing these are designed for - detailed diagrams, simple CAD projects etc etc etc...

    If anyone out there knows of an open source or freeware vector drafting package that offers anything like the ease of use and functionality that CorelDRAW does, please post the info because I bet theres many of us out there that would want it.
    # human firmware exploit
    # Word will insert into your optic buffer
    # without bounds checking

  • Where the heck is Adobe in all of this "let's port it to linux!" madness anyway? Corel is going to beat them up if they don't get something (preferably Photoshop) ported soon.
  • What demo?

    Corel can't put up a demo of Corel Office (presumably) because they know that, if they did, no one would buy it. Isn't the current software sales system, which refuses you a refund if the software doesn't work, wonderful?

    Don't get me wrong -- I actual use wpo2000 on Linux, because it's better than booting windows. But it really is slow and somewhat unreliable. Screen updates are agonizing.

    --

  • ut it's not as easy to just pick two images, do a subtract, duplicate that, and then do a difference with your duplicate on a third.

    pick two images
    open layers dialog on one image
    create new layer, copy second image into layer
    subtract layers
    merge
    duplicate layer
    subtract

    the only thing that would make it easier is being able to open an image directly into a new layer.. hmm..

    --
    blue
  • Just out of curiosity, do you have any evidence to substantiate your claim?
    I have spoken a few times w/ Gav - the lead linux developer, and while we haven't talked much about the porting effort he made it sound quite clear that the code was being actively ported, and not just ran under wine. I could have misheard him, but I'd just like to know for sure.

    nerdfarm.org [nerdfarm.org]

  • Plug (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Part of KDE 2.0 is KIllustrator [uni-magdeburg.de], a vector drawing program.

    It's no Adobe Illustrator, but may be useful for a lot of people.

  • If anyone out there knows of an open source or freeware vector drafting package that offers anything like the ease of use and functionality that CorelDRAW does, please post the info because I bet theres many of us out there that would want it.

    My wife's the artist of the family, and she used CorelDRAW! starting with version 3 in the MS world. It's the 1 program she missees since switching to Linux.

    Right now, she's using a program called Sketch [sourceforge.net] that offers the main functionality you'd expect in a vector graphics program. It's at version .6.x right now, but it's still usable.

    Even so, it's not even close to the level of CorelDRAW! 8, which was the last one my wife used in the Windows world.

    I hope Sketch gets more developers (it only has one right now) so people like us can avoid paying hundreds of dollars for a closed-source, buggy program.

  • I would have to heartily agree with you, it is a good thing that they are releasing their applications for Linux, however it is just another platform to them. Their involvement with KDE has been quite disheartening. I had tremendous gratitude and appreciation for their movement towards linux in the beginning. Now I have a bad taste in my mouth. Reading up on the history of the posts on the KDE-bugs list is really sad. Yes, it is a good thing that they are contributing but they're missing the spirit of open source I think. I hope it changes, because they really are doing good work and I don't want to see that fade. But I can foresee the possibility that their work will be rejected because of their lack of insight as to what exactly open source means.

    nerdfarm.org [nerdfarm.org]
  • I hope Deneba (the makers of Canvas) take this as a wakeup call, and get their act together a little better. I have always prefered Canavas to Corel Draw. Not only does it integrate raster and vector graphics like no other application I've seen, but its vector tools are (IMHO) far better than Corel's.

    But the latest Canvas beta download did not work at all, and we should be seeing close-to-release quality by now. Granted, they are doing a better thing, as pointed out in posting #7, by developing with libwine, rather then just running it in Wine; and that will take longer. But still, it will be a real shame if Corel Draw buries Canvas again just because it got to market sooner.


    Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
  • I highly doubt that Adobe and Macromedia are at all worried that Corel might steal their marketshare... Corel's apps have always aimed for the low-end of the markets, where as Adobe and Macromedia each compete with one another for the high end. Also, no users of Illustrator or Freehand are going to jump to Linux when CorelDraw arrives. It'll not even register a blip on their radar screens... Now if Photoshop, InDesign (or more importantly, Quark XPress), Illustrator and Freehand arrived for Linux, then the users of the programs would take notice and possibly think about switching.

    It's almost like saying "hey, I got Wordpad to run under WINE... Now all the Word users in my company can switch to Linux". It's just not happening. There's an EXTREME amount of loyalty among graphic artists and the applications they use. Witness the Mac's 50+% market share in the graphics segments.

  • Re:Avoid this... (Score:3)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:51AM (#989332) Homepage
    Corel has a generous software return policy. Feel free to buy the software, try it out and return it if it's not to your taste.

    See their FAQ [corel.com] for details.

    "All shrink-wrapped Corel products come with an unconditional money-back guarantee effective for 30 days from the date of purchase..."

    --

  • That's a cool idea, a program that can do vector and bitmap graphics at the same time.
    ---

  • ...it's not as easy to just pick two images, do a subtract, duplicate that, and then do a difference with your duplicate on a third.

    Seems to me that your objection is that its not what you're used to. Fine. No Problem. I'm not arguing that you should use GIMP just because I do. Other posters have already answered how to do these things easily in GIMP so I think we can take it as a given that for a user experienced in the package concerned it is easy in either one. I've used both and I like both but the fact remains that for other reasons related to what I use my main workstation for it is usually running linux not windows - this means that I will look for a solution that runs on linux and for photoshop-like functionality the clear choice is GIMP. My opinion could change if Adobe ever release a linux-native version of photoshop but it would have to beat GIMP by a long way to overcome the cost advantage. By all means go ahead and use photoshop if you wish, its good but it just isnt the ideal solution for me. On my network its a different matter, I have no problem with any of my users choosing to use one or the other, and in that area at least they wont get "I dont support that program" out of me for either photoshop or the GIMP.
    # human firmware exploit
    # Word will insert into your optic buffer
    # without bounds checking

  • While we're talking about those screenshots, would anyone tell me (and possibly others) what window manager is that nice one?

    That's the latest Sawfish running under Helix Code's GNOME 1.2, which, in turn, is running under an up-to-date frozen Debian. The theme is qn-x11, and you can find it at sawmill.themes.org. [themes.org] Look around for the accompanying GTK theme. The Photo-Paint and Corel Draw windows themselves look a little strange because I've made no effort to get my KDE/QT setup to sync with my GNOME stuff, and Corel's apps use your QT setup.

    Kind regards,
    ------------
    Michael Hall
    Charlottesville, Virginia

  • You still haven't responded to the initial question
    Do you or do you not have proof or even any real evidence of Corel using win executables wrapped with Wine? Just because they are slow doesn't mean that is what they are doing.


    nerdfarm.org [nerdfarm.org]
  • Just clearing up misconceptions. And Corel has said that there were problems with using libwine, which is why they didn't use it.
  • Do all the people who think WINE sucks really think that a source port is either reasonable or possible for a major piece of software like WPO2000 or CorelDRAW (or Canvas, for that matter) from a major software vendor such as Corel ina timely manner? Do those of you who think WINE is such a terrible solution actually code, or are you just commentators? Do you understand how WINE is being used here? Can you see the market limitations that a real life company operates under? Good grief.
  • Anyone have any idea how CorelDraw compares with Visio or Dia? I'd be interested in using it for technical diagrams, although at this point I haven't tried Dia yet. Visio file import/export is also really important for a lot of people.
  • Someone says, "Evidently Corel feels that the Gimp is good enough a free competitor to make selling
    Photo-Paint alone useless!"

    You evidently don't know Corel's marketing history with this product. PhotoPaint has typically been bundled as a freebie with other programs, such as Ventura Publisher and CorelDraw. (I don't recall ever seeing PhotoPaint offered for purchase by itself.) This is reasonable enough since it's not the big name in Windows that some other bitmap editors are, so rather than try to hack a chunk from a tough market, why not make it a throw-in so folk can try it without extra expense? Second, a bitmap editor is often useful *in conjunction with* a vector editor, so it's quite reasonable both to bundle them together, and to use PhotoPaint as a free teaser to get people to check out CorelDraw who might otherwise not buy it.

  • How hard is the CorelDRAW vector format to be reverse-engineered? Can't be harder than .DOC.


    "Standing up to an evil system [pcshop.com.br] is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
  • Trust me, I don't think Adobe is losing any sleep(and surely not any profits) because some linux-only college student cant run any of their products.
  • But GNOME is NOT a commercial desktop..

    As far as gimp goes.. I DO think its a very good app. Yes it does have its problems.. But the current devel versions are going VERY well. (Actually.. after letting one of the graphics people at work play with gimp some.. he is thinking about switching over from windows/photoshop)

    Usually a 1.0 product is kinda lacking.. and the next version ends up being what the 1.0 version should have been. (good examples include gimp.. gnome.. kde.. hell.. windows.. os2.. ms office... :) )

  • Dia and Visio where designed more with things like flow charts in mind.. Corel Draw on the other hand was designed with graphics design in mind. Although you COULD use Corel Draw for things like flow charts.. and you COULD use Dia or Visio (or rational rose) for graphics design.. BUT, it would make a lot more since to use the 'correct' tool for the job :)

    Ive used Dia a few times at work... Its a little buggy.. But it is a decent program.. It also allows you to export to a few various file formats.
  • OK, any unix-oid with python/tk...

    Use sketch, its got a fair few features (I rate it something about CorelDRAW! 2, but with scripting).
  • The GIMP and CorelDraw are 2 different animals. One is a bitmap manipulation program, while the other is a vector manipulation program. They are both good at what they do, but neither can be as good as the other.
  • You cannot pit GIMP vs Coreldraw. They don't do the same thing. I will say that is has been a long time since I've looked at CD, but from what I remember, it is a Vector package. My brother uses 2 things to do his job (he is a graphic designer): Photoshop, and Freehand. 2 programs dealing with graphics, but they both do very different things. Just remember that.
  • If there is a clearer situation in which Open Sourcing a piece of software would be beneficial to a company I can't think of it.

    Corel Draw is seriously on the skids, the market is shifting towards Adobe products to a large degree, and Corel keeps throwing it's money into battles with Microsoft that it is ill prepared or equipped to win.

    If they were to open source Corel Draw they might be able to regain some of the valuable mindshare of young artists that they have lost in the last 5 years. Sure, they lose that revenue stream, but perhaps a more profitable switch would be to supporting products such as effects and filters. Take a loss on the razor, and make your money on the blades type of a plan.

  • CorelDraw 9 let us not forget is only a Beta. It still has a way to go. Expecting the .2 release to be full blow like photoshop is just silly. Expecting the full vector editing package to be in the beta is even sillier.

    That said, I think this is still pretty sweet. They have the right focus and direction now, as opposed to 18 months ago and having the photopaint piece available for free is the right approach for the audience that will be using it. Especially the Macromedia Flash support. No one has been able to do this cleanly yet, hopefully Corel will get it right. When the vector engine is final hopes are that the high end color management features will be as rich as they were on the previous releases for the Win environments.

  • I like corel, but they haven't done so good since they have switched over to doing linux. They are having major finacial problems and have had to lay off a bunch of people. I hope that this can help them get back on their feet and keep putting out good releases.
  • The only thing worth getting CorelDraw for is the vector editing features, at least on Linux. Maybe it'd be more comfortable or reassuring for the novice, though.

    However, I have to thank Corel for their work on the Wine project; things are really looking up there. Although CorelDRAW 9 might not be quite production quality yet because it uses WINE, it would also never be on Linux if it didn't. And it isn't like I haven't seen a "sluggish" or "flickering" GTK application before--that doesn't mean it's GTK's fault! That sort of behavior is as often a problem with the application as it is with the library, and Windows has some very different ideas on how to implement graphics that I'd be happy to deal with just a little flickering for now.

    However, chew on this. If this is successful, then perhaps CorelDRAW 10 will be equivalent to--or better than--the Windows version. And if so, maybe all your Windows apps will run natively or get ported to Linux.

    All thanks to WINE and Corel.

    So I'll think about buying a copy, if I can afford it.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • I don't see what being a Gimp fan has anything aty all to do with Corel Draw.

    One's a Vector-based drawing tool, the other is an Image editor. They are meant to do entirely different things. (Or the same thing in entirely different ways. Potato - Po-tah-to, I guess)

    Linux has been missing a decent vector-based tool, and this port has been anticipated. Isn't this like comparing C&C and Quake?

  • Re:CorelDraw is not GIMP (Score:5)

    by MichaelH ( 3651 ) <pdxmph+sd@NOspAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:12AM (#989353) Homepage

    These CorelDraw-vs-GIMP comparisons are starting to annoy me. Repeat after me:

    CorelDraw is a vector drawing program.

    The Gimp is a bitmap drawing program.

    Of course, you might be less annoyed if you read the review and realized that CorelDraw the suite includes Corel Photo-Paint as well as Corel Draw the program.

    Kind regards,
    ------------
    Michael Hall
    Charlottesville, Virginia

  • Ok, we all know that the only reason anyone's going to click the link is for the screenshots. :)

    Photopaint [linuxplanet.com]
    Corel Draw [linuxplanet.com]

    --

  • I personally would love to see Corel go open source. If they open sourced Corel Office 2000, M$ would be flat out dead. Corel is setting themselves up in a good position though. They're the first major office/graphics company to dive head first into linux. When (ok, IF) M$ gets around to porting Office, Corel has already seized the Office market under linux. M$ has been avoiding linux but it's going to hurt them in the end. Just wait....
  • A quick check at CompUSA Onlineshows that full suite price to be $1980.95 and upgrade price is $931.85.

    Doing my own search, I find $225 for the stripped down version, and $490 for the full version of Corel Draw alone.

    High, but not nearly as high as the figure you quoted.

    This is typical of office software, and quite reasonable when compared to the cost of the machine it's going to be used on or of the employee who's going to be using it.

    There are almost certianly student versions available for a much lower price, too (around here, student versions are half off or better).

    Also, your hyperlink seems to have been munged. Further inspection reveals that they're using some kind of bizzare scratch keys to encode query data, making linking to specific results unreliable.
  • Actually, depending on how you look at it, Corel is doing some of Adobe's work for them. :)

    Adobe dropped support for UNIX a long time ago, around Photoshop 3.x

    However, Photoshop 3.0 for Windows 3.1 runs beautifully on my Linux box, thanks to WINE. It's really speedy, and I haven't had any problems with it lately.

    But, the damage is done, we already have The GIMP, which has great support for .PSD's, scripting, transparent compression, and all kinds of other stuff Adobe missed out on. (how about a decent JPEG encoder? If I'm paying hundreds of dollars, you could at least find one!)

    So, the bottom line for Linux will be... sure, you could use Photoshop, but why would you want to? ;)

    (yeah, I know, Pantone and CMYK support. My mom is a screenprinter. But most people aren't, most of them think they're web developers, and wouldn't know a Pantone Blue from a #0000FF...)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • photopaint was a neea program on the mac.. Stability problems forced me back to photoshop. Hope its a bit more stable under linux..

    /Aram
  • Is Corel ever gonna start *porting* their apps to Linux? WINE just doesn't cut it for me.

    ___

  • GYVE (Score:1)

    by emir ( 111909 )
    there is a program called GYVE ("the GNU Yellow Vector Editor) you can find it on
    http://www.se.gnu.org/software/gyve/gyve.html

    i havent tryed it but it seems as its what you have been looking for.
    description on that url says:

    GYVE is a vector-based drawing program in the spirit of Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. The goal of GYVE is an extensible drawing editor for designers.
  • I cannot believe they charge $150 for this..
  • Posted by 11223:

    Word Perfect Office 2000 betas. The Corel Draw betas (which I was accepted for, but didn't participate in) are done the same way.
  • But in the mean time they're releasing the windows binaries wrapped with WINE.
  • The programs are great and priced reasonable considering what you get with them. In addition to CD9 and Photo-Paint you get:

    Bitstream(TM) Font Navigator. Great font handling and an extensive printer library of drivers

    Corel TEXTURE(TM) - realistic natural textures

    CorelTRACE(TM) - bitmap-to-vector conversion

    Corel CAPTURE(TM) - application window screen captures

    Digimarc® Digital Watermarking Human Software Squizz!(TM) - distortion effects

    25,000 high-quality clipart images** - 10,000 new to CorelDRAW 9

    1,000 high-resolution photos

    1,000 TrueType® and Type 1 fonts - 850 updated to include the Euro currency symbol

  • Kudos to Corel, we need this competition (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been using PhotoPaint and CorelDraw for windows for about 2 years now. The main reason why I bought it was because it was less than half the price of Photoshop -- the so-called industry standard. Additionally, to buy Illustrator to get a vector based editor as well as Photoshop -- which is pretty much the equivalent to just buying the Corel Draw suite, you can already see the immediate savings. For about 90% of users, whatever Photoshop does better (if anything at all), doesn't justify the ridiculous price for that program (and the same for Illustrator). Compare this with Windows (and Be, Linux, etc.). Redmond can charge whatever they like, just because they are considered a 'standard'. Just as Linux caught Windows flat-footed in the server market -- I think Corel stands to do the same here. They've put in more work, and are willing to charge less for a similar product -- and that can't be a bad thing.

  • As one of the beta testers... (Score:4)

    by Aleatoric ( 10021 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:19AM (#989376)
    I have to give this pretty good marks, all in all.

    Not much to add to the review, I've had good results with it, though. I like some of the features in photopaint, even though I'm still a big Gimp fan, I think photopaint is a good complement to it. Draw is good, also. I don't do a great deal with vector illustrations, though, so I didn't wring it out like it did photopaint.

    As for running under wine, I've seen no significant performance issues. Some of the screen updates, etc., could be quicker, but I've found nothing that affects the usability of it.

    For comparison purposes, I'm running it on a 400M celeron with 256M ram, and Mandrake 7.1

    Wine does seem to be a bit finicky about XFree 4.0 though, but I haven't pursued this enough to find out what's really the issue.
  • I like Corel, and used to be a whiz at Corel Draw 3.0 (tells you how long ago that was). However, I don't think Corel "gets" the open source movement. To them, it is just creating a MS-Free platform for them to sell their products on. I really don't think they're going to be a contributer to the open source movement, even with their own distro.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're releasing canned apps for the platform, I just don't think they'll have enough clout to stay around for long. We need more companies like Helix. Sofware needs to be a service-based industry, instead of a product-based one.

    Just my $2E-2.

  • Re:CorelDraw is not GIMP (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20, 2000 @07:20AM (#989378)

    Repeat after me:
    CorelDraw is a vector drawing program.
    The Gimp is a bitmap drawing program

    Ok,
    CorelDraw is a vector drawing program.
    The Gimp is a bitmap drawing program.

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