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History

In 1987, Corel hired software engineers Michel Bouillon and Pat Beirne to develop a vector-based illustration program to bundle with their desktop publishing systems. That program, CorelDraw, was initially released in 1989. CorelDraw 1.x and 2.x runs under Windows 2.x and 3.0. CorelDraw 3.0 came into its own with Microsoft's release of Windows 3.1. The inclusion of TrueType in Windows 3.1 transformed CorelDraw into a serious illustration program capable of using system-installed outline fonts without requiring third-party software such as Adobe Type Manager; paired with a photo editing program (Corel Photo-Paint), a font manager and several other pieces of software, it was also part of the first all-in-one graphics suite.

Features by version

CorelDraw		Version support		Windows Compatibility	New Features
Release date	Version	Reading files	Writing files
Jan 1989	1	1	1	2.1	First version
Mar 1989	1.01	1	1	2.1	Introduces backups on save, and draw rectangles from their centre
Apr 1989	1.02	1	1	2.1	IBM PIF file format support
Jul 1989	1.10	1	1	2.1	102 new fonts
Feb 1990	1.11	1	1	2.1	Auto CAD DXF import/export support
Sep 1991	2	1, 2	1, 2	3.0	Envelope tool (for distorting text or objects using a primary shape), Blend (for morphing shapes), Extrusion (for simulating perspective and volume in objects) and Perspective (to distort objects along X and Y axes). CorelDraw for Unix also became available.
15 May 1992	3	1, 2, 3	2, 3	3.0, 3.1(preferred)	Included Corel Photo-Paint (for bitmap editing), CorelSHOW (for creating on-screen presentations), CorelCHART (for graphic charts), Mosaic and Corel TRACE (for vectorizing bitmaps). The inclusion of this software was the precedent for the actual graphic suites. CorelDraw for Unix also became available.
20 May 1993	4	1, 2, 3, 4	3, 4	3.1	Photo-Paint (for bitmap editing), Corel SHOW (for creating on-screen presentations), Corel CHART (for graphic charts), Corel MOVE for animation, Mosaic and Corel TRACE (for vectorizing bitmaps). Multi-page capabilities, Power lines, support for graphic tablets, Clone tool, elastic node editing, Envelope tool.
27 May 1994	5	1, 2, 3, 4, 5	3, 4, 5	3.1	This is the last version which was made for, and works on Windows 3.x. Corel Ventura was included in the suite (and then sold as a separate program). It was a desktop publishing application akin to Page Maker, Quark Express, or In Design.
24 Aug 1995	6	3, 4, 5, 6	5, 6	95	This is the first version which was made exclusively for 32-bit Windows. New features were customizable interface, Polygon, Spiral, Knife and Eraser tools. Corel Memo, Corel Presents, Corel Motion 3D, Corel Depth, Corel Multimedia Manager, Corel Font Master and Corel DREAM (for 3D modelling) were included in the suite.
8 Oct 1996	7	3, 4, 5, 6, 7	5, 6, 7	95, NT 4	Context-sensitive Property bar, Print Preview with Zoom and Pan options, Scrapbook (for viewing a drag-and-dropping graphic objects), Publish to HTML option, Draft and Enhanced display options, Interactive Fill and Blend tools, Transparency tools, Natural Pen tool, Find & Replace wizard, Convert Vector to Bitmap option (inside Draw), Spell checker, Thesaurus and Grammar checker. The suite included Corel Scan and Corel Barista (a Java-based document exchange format).
27 Oct 1997	8	3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8	6, 7, 8	95, NT 4	Digger selection, Docker windows, Interactive Distortion, 3D, Envelope and tools, Realistic Dropshadow tool, interactive color mixing, color palette editor, guidelines as objects, custom-sized pages, duotone support. Corel Versions was included in the suite.
31 Aug 1999	9	3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9	5, 6, 7, 8, 9	95, 98, NT 4	Mesh fill tool (for complex color filling), Artistic Media tool, Publish to PDF features, embedded ICC color profiles, Multiple On-screen Color Palettes and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 6 support. The suite included Canto Cumulus LE, a piece of software for media management.
13 Nov 2000	10	10†	10 ‡	98, Me, NT 4,2000	CorelR.A.V.E. (for vector animation), Perfect Shapes, Web graphics tools (for creating interactive elements such as buttons), Page sorter, multilingual document support, navigator window. Open, save, import and export in SVG format.
1 Aug 2002	11	11 †	5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11	98, Me, NT 4, 2000, XP	Symbols library, image slicing (for web design), pressure-sensitive vector brushes, 3-point drawing tools.
10 Feb 2004	12	12 †	12 ‡	2000, XP	Dynamic guides, Smart Drawing tools, Export to MS Office or Word option, Virtual Segment Delete tool, Unicode text support.
17 Jan 2006	X3 (13)	X3 †	7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, X3	2000, 2003, XP (32-bit, 64-bit), Vista (32-bit only)	Double click Crop tool (the first vector software able to crop groups of vectors and bitmap images at the same time), Smart fill tool, Chamfer/Fillet/Scallop/Emboss tool, Image Adjustment Lab. Trace became integrated inside Draw under the name PowerTrace.
22 Jan 2008	X4 (14)	7 to X4 †	7 to X4	XP, Vista, 7 (32-bit, 64-bit)	Whatthefont font identification service linked inside CorelDraw, ConceptShare, Table tool, independent page layers, live text formatting, support for RAW camera files.
23 Feb 2010	X5 (15)	7 to X5	7 to X5	XP, Vista, 7 (32-bit, 64-bit)	Built-in content organizer (CorelConnect), CD, web graphics and animation tools, multi-core performance improvement, digital content (professional fonts, clip arts, and photos), object hinting, pixel view, enhanced Mesh tool with transparency options, added touch support, and new supported file formats. It has developed Transformation, which makes multiple copies of a single object. For the first time, OpenType versions of Helvetica, Frutiger, Futura and Garamond #3 font families (32 fonts total) from Linotype foundry are included instead of the Bitstream counterparts. All but Garamond are in OpenType Pro format.
20 Mar 2012	X6 (16)	7 to X6	7 to X6	XP, Vista, 7, 8 (32-bit, 64-bit)
27 March 2014	X7 (17)	7 to X7	7 to X7	Windows 8 (32-bit, 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit)

 CorelDraw 10 to X4 can open files of version 3 and later, but certain features may not be supported.
 The list of file formats that CorelDraw 10 to X4 can write may not be complete in this table.

Features

Supported platforms

CorelDraw was originally developed for Microsoft Windows 3 and currently runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. The current version, X7, was released on 27 March 2014.

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 did not 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.

With version 6, Corel Draw introduced the automation of tasks using a Corel proprietary scripting language, COREL Script. With version 10, support for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) was introduced for scripting by what Corel calls now macros. Corel recommends to no longer use the COREL Script language but only MS VBA.

Structure

In its first versions, the CDR file format was a completely proprietary file format primarily used for vector graphic drawings and developed by Corel Corporation, recognizable by the first two bytes of the file being "WL". Starting with Corel Draw 3, the file format changed to a Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) envelope, recognizable by the first four bytes of the file being "RIFF", and a "CDR*vrsn" in bytes 9 to 15, with the asterisk "*" being in early versions just a blank, and beginning with Corel Draw 4, the version number of the writing program in hexadecimal ("4" meaning version 4, "D" meaning version 14). The actual data chunk of the RIFF remains a Corel proprietary format.

From version X4 (14) on, the CDR file is a ZIP-compressed directory of several files, among them XML-files and the RIFF-structured riffdata.cdr with the familiar version signature in versions X4 (CDREvrsn) and X5 (CDRFvrsn), and a root.dat with Corel Draw X6, where the bytes 9 to 15 look slightly different -- "CDRGfver" in a file created with X6. "F" was the last valid hex digit, and the "fver" now indicates that the letter before does no longer stand for a hex digit.

There is no publicly available CDR file format specification.

Other CorelDraw file formats include CorelDraw Compressed (CDX), CorelDraw Template (CDT)^[31] and Corel Presentation Exchange (CMX).

Use of CDR-files in other programs

In December 2006 the sK1 open source project team started to reverse-engineer the CDR format.^[33] The results and the first working snapshot of the CDR importer were presented at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 conference taking place in May 2007 in Montreal (Canada).^[34] Later on the team parsed the structure of other Corel formats with the help of the open source CDR Explorer.^[35] As of 2008, the sK1 project claims to have the best import support for CorelDraw file formats among open source software programs. The sK1 project developed also the UniConvertor, a command line open source tool which supports conversion from CorelDraw ver.7-X4 formats (CDR/CDT/CCX/CDRX/CMX) to other formats. UniConvertor is also used in Inkscape and Scribus open source projects as an external tool for CorelDraw files importing.

In 2007, Microsoft blocked CDR file format in Microsoft Office 2003 with the release of Service Pack 3 for Office 2003. Microsoft later apologized for inaccurately blaming the CDR file format and other formats for security problems in Microsoft Office and released some tools for solving this problem.

In 2012 the joint LibreOffice/re-lab team implemented libcdr, a library for reading CDR files from v1 to the currently latest X6 version and CMX files.The library has extensive support for shapes and their properties, including support for color management and spot colors, and has a basic support for text.^[43] The library provides a built-in converter to SVG, and a converter to OpenDocument is provided by writerperfect package. The libcdr library is expected to be used in LibreOffice 3.6,^[44] and thanks to public API it can be freely used by other applications.

Other applications supporting CDR files

Main article: Comparison of vector graphics editors

CDR file format import is partially or fully supported in following applications:

• Adobe Illustrator - CorelDraw 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
• Corel PaintShop Photo Pro
• Corel WordPerfect Office
• Inkscape with UniConvertor installed; partial support
• LibreOffice with libcdr installed - CorelDraw 1 to X6
• Macromedia Freehand - CorelDraw 7, 8
• Microsoft Visio 2002 - CorelDraw! Drawing File versions 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0 (.cdr), Corel Clipart (.cmx)
• sK1 - partial support
• Xara Designer Pro and Xara Photo & Graphic Designer - early versions of CorelDraw CDR6