Hi!

After paying loads and loads of money to Microsoft, we now use:

Firefox as browser
Thunderbird as mail-client
OpenOffice as Office-suite

By just doing that, many of the people working with sales, no longer have the need for windows. Cause they just use Office, PDF and mail. Our plan is to migrate all the computers (about 15) to Linux during this year (2006).

Our servers are running Linux already...

We now have a test-installation (Kubuntu) on an laptop which is rotating on the company so everyone can "feel and touch" KDE. KDE is choosed cause the most people felt it look like windows (maybe not what the people developing KDE wants to hear - but its good for Linux, i beleive).

So, the laptop has almost every program we need to migrate to Linux. The program missing is CorelDraw. We have used CorelDraw for about ten years, and have lots and lots of files...

We have tried Inkscape, which is a great program. But as it lacks support for cdr-files, we have no use for it now.

We cannot change file-format cause the equipment that will make our products uses cdr-files.

So, we are really close to be able to migrate. But I cannot find a program that can import/export to CorelDraw.

Please help! I have 15 persons willing to skip windows for Linux, but not the one program needed!

As a programmer (10 years exp), I'm willing to write a plugin to inkscape, but I need the specification of the CorelDraw fileformat. I have contacted Corel in this matter, but they just ignore me.

Your best option would probably to use something like Wine to just use CorelDraw within Linux as I don't know of any programs that can read or convert to CorelDraw since it's their own proprietary format.

Personally I would suggest that you should start half the users to another format with a different program like The Gimp within Linux, so your not dependent on Corel's own format and you can start using other formats that are easily convertable to different format's and platforms. Like for example, if you used Photoshop, The Gimp can read and convert using their own format, preserving layers, etc.

Corel is vector--n'est-ce pas? Gimp and Photoshop are bitmap....
"corel draw file conversion" gives 1 million + hits in Google---some look promising.

is this what you want? http://www.inkscape.org/

Errm.. original poster claims they've tried it already.

If Adobe Illustrator works using wine, its another possible solution.

As trickykid mentioned, Wine or its commercial counterpart, Crossover Office, might be able to run Corel Draw. I just looked it up at Crossover Office. It has not been tested so they don't know if it will work.

Crossover Office is a lot easier to set up than Wine, but it is just a repackaged version of Wine. You can get a 30 day license to demo Crossover Office at codeweavers.com. Here is their application compatibility database:

http://www.codeweavers.com/site/comp...=ASC;curPos=50

It wouldn't hurt to try it.

or, put the effort out to get CorelDraw!Suite version 9* for Linux, which Corel took off the market and stopped supporting.
they did make both corelDraw!suite and Corel Office suite for linux, until Microsoft bought some shares and said kill the linux crap to them.

I have both the rpm version and the deb version of Photo Paint from the CorelDraw! suite, it uses wine to run in linux.
the problem is, it will NOT work on a 2.6 kernel.
you have to have a 2.4 kernel running to use the linux version.
this lets most current distros out of the running as options for using it.

as stressjunkie said, crosover office will run CorelDraw! Suite, and it may fix the kernel locking issue of the linux port of the Suite.

*Version 9, last version with a linux version of the suite.

could run it on slack, seems as wine would be the best way if it can handle it or if you have fast enough computers use visualization or dual boot for it, can still port your computers and use old windows programs

Is this documented anywhere??

For the OP: Have you considered just migrating to OpenOffice? It has an excellent drawing component. Is it possible there is a file converter somewhere?

One option I don't know if you want to consider is to have a machine or two stay on windows just for Corel.

You guys drew me into this one. Then I saw the original post was from last January. I imagine the O.P. has either solved their problem, or given up by now! But FWIW, I agree that proprietary formats really suck when you're trying to do things like the O.P. is (was).