Corel x6

[Robert Walters]

I searched the forum, nothing specific came up.


I use Corel 14 now, but considering 16. What I'd like to know is:


1. Are there any significant improvements functionality wise?
Bug fixes, the way certain tools work, ease of use, performance, etc.

Examples:
The ability to import compressed illustrator (and other) files.
Improved display issues (redraw, ghost artifacts, positioning of objects)
Less corruption of drawings.


2. I heard that it attempts to "phone home" periodically, and that if it can't it nags or disables it's usage. Since I keep this system off the net, I really don't want/need the annoyance. Can anyone shed some lights on this subject?


3. Any dramatically new features?


Thanks

[Mike Null]

Corel is having a special on X7 upgrade at $159. If I were going to upgrade that's what I would choose.

http://www.coreldraw.com/static/product_content/cdgs/x7/CorelDRAWGraphicsSuiteX7_ComparisonChart_en.pdf

[Brian Leavitt]

I've been using X6 since May 2012. Honestly, x4 worked better, in my opinion. I have always made Macros to do a few things, like moving objects to the upper left corner, top of page, and 3 inches down from the top of the page. The macro is supposed to group together whatever I have selected, move it, and ungroup it. Well, X6 has never done the initial grouping correctly. I tried everything I could think of to get it to work. Corel support couldn't do it either. Not that big a deal - I just have to group things before using the macro, but still not super happy with it.

Another issue I had - I use two monitors. With X4 I had my workspace on one monitor and all of the tools, color pallet, and several other dockers on the other monitor. That wouldn't work correctly with X6 either. Everytime I opened the program the things would either disappear or move back to monitor 1.

It also doesn't like Logitech's Setpoint software. Specifically, the newer versions of it. If you have a mouse with a tilt wheel, and use that to scroll left and right on the page, the next time you zoom in or out everything in the workspace disappears. Then you have to save and reopen to get it to come back.

Last thing I can remember about issues - It can't keep up with my mouse clicks and key hits much of the time. This is not because I have a slow computer, because I don't - it has an eight core, 3.8GHz processor, 16 gigs of ram, and a very good video card. For example - I use Ctrl+K to break objects/text apart. So If I select an object and immediately hit Ctrl+K, it does nothing 50% of the time. I have to wait a second and try again. Same with ungrouping/grouping objects. This didn't start until one of the updates, but it's pretty annoying.


It still doesn't open compressed .ai files.

I can't remember if X4 has the "WhatTheFont?!..." feature, but I use that a lot. The "Text Properties" docker is also better than the individual "Paragraph Formatting" and "Character Formatting" dockers.

That's about all I can remember at the moment. Hopefully X7 is better, but I would stay with X4 before going to X6, personally.

[Robert Walters]

@Mike
Thanks. IIRC all the "odd" versions of corel were (or at least seemed like) the BETA versions.
I suppose someone will chime in in that respect though.


@Brian
Thank you for the insight, much appreciated. Over the years I've been finding that I am more and more fighting Corel than it being productive. I've always loved the rich feature set, but when you spend 5x longer fighting Corel than just making it do what you want/need it to, it begins to make you grow weary.

One of the things that I would boast about Corel is it's ability to accept ANY file, this is no longer the case. There are newer variations of file types and it doesn't just mess them up a little, it flat out right refuses them.
I find that OSX PREVIEW (it's a default file/graphics/video viewer) can open them up no probelm, and then I save as another format (uncompressed) and then bring them into corel.

On my last project, I probably should have used a CAD application rather than Corel, but it wasn't "that bad" per se. I had to create three parts that eventually fit together. So, for alignment purposes I drew them all nested within each other, then once aligned in all axis, separated them into their three components.

I dragged out a couple of guidelines, moved/aligned the objects as needed, then deleted the guidelines.
I then did a marque select of the objects and a CTRL+G to group them. I have no clue why, but it then placed the grouped objects on a GUIDELINES LAYER, even though I was only working on a single LAYER 1, and never actually created a GUIDELINES LAYER. No matter what I did, it what ALWAYS 'group to guidelines layer', then I was like Where the H-E-double-hocky-sticks did my stuff go?! Then realize corel mucked up again and have to drag it back down to LAYER1 over and over again. Never did figure out the cause of that, but oh well, par for the course thus is graphics software.

Yes, X4 does have WhatTheFont, I too use the Character formatting docker, and just recently found out that you can only do kerning in 5% increments and you can't even go in and manually enter in a value (123% for example) like you can with point size (11.3pt).


If anyone knows about the "phone home", please let me know.