CorelDRAW is a
vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of
Ottawa, Canada. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite, which
bundles CorelDraw with a bitmap image editor, Corel PhotoPaint, and
other graphics-related programs (see below). The latest version is
designated X6 (equivalent to version 16), and was released in March
2012.
Corel DRAW 12 has capabilities of Dynamic guides, Smart Drawing tools,
Export to MS Office or Word option, Virtual Segment Delete tool, Unicode
text support.
CorelDRAW was originally developed for Microsoft Windows 3 and currently
runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The current version, X6, was released on 20
march 2012.
Versions for Mac OS and Mac OS X were at one time available, but due to
poor sales these were discontinued. The last port for Linux was
version 9 (released in 2000, it didn't run natively; instead, it used a
modified version of Wine to run) and the last version for OS X was
version 11 (released in 2001). Also, up until version 5, CorelDRAW was
developed for Windows 3.1x, CTOS and OS/2.
Problems installing or running older versions of Corel Draw under
Windows 7 may be overcome by using Microsoft's "Troubleshoot
Compatibility" — right-click on the setup.exe file on the installation
disk to select this facility (tested on version 12 with Windows 7, where
previous attempts without Microsoft "Troubleshoot Compatibility"
failed).
Over time, additional components were developed or acquired and bundled
with CorelDRAW. The list of bundled packages usually changes somewhat
from one release to the next, though there are several mainstays that
have remained in the package for many releases now, including PowerTRACE
(a bitmap to vector graphic converter), PHOTO-PAINT (a bitmap graphic
editor), and CAPTURE (a screen capture utility).