[Clipart] Using Clip Art

[Alan Horkan]

Inkscape
http://inkscape.org

Open Clip Art
http://OpenClipArt.org

On Mon, 3 Oct 2005, Nicu Buculei wrote:

> Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 09:05:05 +0300
> From: Nicu Buculei <nicu at apsro.com>
> To: Open Clip Art Library <clipart at lists.freedesktop.org>
> Subject: Re: [Clipart] Using Clip Art
>
> Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:
> > As for Corel, last I knew, that was the name of a software company in
> > the 80s that got bought out sometime in the 90s and no longer exists,
> > so when you say "a program like Corel", I'm not sure I know exactly
> > what you're talking about.  Corel used to make a program called Draw,
> > which ran on DOS, but that was aeons ago and I was under the
> > impression Adobe pretty much ate their lunch with Photoshop during the
> > pre-Windows era; I haven't heard anything significant about Corel Draw
> > for over a decade.  Did whoever bought them out revive the Draw
> > product and continue to update it?  Does it support vector graphics?
> > I must profess ignorance here.
>
> Corel was pretty much slaughtered on the market by Adobe but still
> continue to exist and make software. They were not bought by anybody,

Not exactly bought by a competitor but they were taken over by a group
called Vector Capital and radically restuctured.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/2169261

Vector Capital $1 per share bought Corel in August 2003
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel

> but bought themselves other products (like the popular PaintShopPro).
> The current version of Corel Draw can import and export SVG.

... and there was a Corel SVG Viewer too but it doesn't seem like it will
be getting much attention anymore.  There are question about Corel
supporting OASIS and OpenDocument but it is hard to tell if anything is
going to happen there.

While we are on the subject does Corel Draw (or any other Corel product)
support SVG Filters or Animation?

You might also be interested to hear about Grafigo, a drawing program from
Corel aimed at Tablet PCs, which has a fully pen based interface including
support for gestures.  (I dont have a Tablet PC but I force installed it
but failed to get it to run but skim read the documentation instead.)

I ask because they appear to have quietly discontinued Jasc Web Draw.
Not suprising really with Webdraw being grossly over-priced for what it
does at $200 dollars and Corel selling a full suite for much more
reasonable prices but it seems like a missed opportuntity as it could have
easily been repurposed and with better marketing sold to graphic designers
developing SVG for Mobile devices (Ikivo charge $99 for their animator
product, a plugin which is entirely dependant on Adobe Illustrator so at
$99 Webdraw could be a competative product.)

How is this relevant?  I'm not sure it is but I thought it was interesting
and chances are my mentioning of all these competitors wont do us any harm
in the search engines.  :)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Abiword http://www.abisource.com
Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/