>I'll have to try out that bitmap editor thingie on our >CorelDraw8. But the question is whether you have tried the >same process with Powerpoint? Secondly, I guess I have a >hard time figuring out why someone would do what you're >descibing. Certainly not rotating it 5 full rotations.
The example is to show it clearly - the loss of resolution in manipulation is the real problem here - it just shouldn't happen. The same problem will show up more subtly, but if you print in high enough resolution, it can be very problematic. Note that this is not a problem in Draw, but PhotoPaint, PrintHouse, PrintOffice, etc...
For Quattro Pro, QP is lousy now. The upgrade to 9 killed it. Some mktg wiz decided that 1 million worksheets would look good on the side of a box, and the slight degradation of memory management from 7 to 8 suddenly became a critical flaw. I have both office suites, but I gave up on QP at this last version.
You are right about them being minor annoyances, by and large, with the possible exception of QP9. But the problem in Corel is that they never go away. And the few talented people who are otherwise stupid enough to stay loyal to Corel are not given the problems that they can see. The company would rather add a column full of new features than improve stability.
Rod is probably over critical, but he is right about the 'spaghetti' code problem, and it is compounded by a lack of good mid-level people. What Corel should have done when they bought WP was a three-fold strategy
1) Upgrade marketing, try and improve presence. This, I think they did, perhaps too aggressively/expensively. Release a new version, add some needed features, the short term step.
2) Play to the strengths - WP's market share in law offices is still huge, and has been in decay. Building from the niche market. This was a medium term approach that Corel caught on to late, and didn't execute especially well.
3) Take a solid development team, give it a clear spec, a two or three year time frame to redo WP in a modern OOP structure, giving them a strong foundation for both future versions and more robust inter-application communications. The long term strategy, and it just didn't happen. |
