Sneak Preview of CorelDraw 9 for Linux

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."

Comments

CorelDraw is not GIMP

[jpatokal]

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 makes good on its claims.

Cheers,
-j.

Re:CorelDraw is not GIMP

[MichaelH]

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,
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Michael Hall
Charlottesville, Virginia