Are there any "corel" plans to release a "professional page layout" program, something like Adobe INDD?
Er, there were a few things Corel messed up over time when they acquired VP. And while I can run VP on a modern OS, it really doesn't like going paste XP Pro and it can be a mistake using OTF or TT fonts with Type 1 outlines. On Win 10, I can just about crash it at will. But it is still usable for what I need.
I don't think I am being pessimistic. Here's what I believe would happen. There would be another shake up with the current management and engineers--something that just occurred a couple months ago due to the reorganizing from the investors whom just purchased Quark last year. Corel would need to increase the price again (which also just happened). It would go to subscription and Quark would lose yet more customers. They would lose more of their customer base due to disruption. Etc.
That said, I do know a number of individuals and some companies that would welcome direct CD and PP import, myself included. Whether that requires Corel to purchase Quark or not is another issue. If Quark & Corel would work together especially that CD for the Mac is now a thing again, both companies would benefit by an agreement. Corel & Quark might get more sales and that would lessen the pressure over time for people using CC as an all in one solution. They both could be sales outlet in they way of bundling each others products.
Let's look at the past X8 a lousy fontmanager, 2017 the great node screwep, 2018 fixed the nodes and was the best release for years. Then came 2019, the mother of all screwups. CorelDRAW cannot survive unless it is part of a portfolio that supports it. CD cost to much to make right because it's not some one or two trick pony line Affinity or InkScape so it will cost allot to fix and then with the support of an entire portfolio it can be upgraded regularly at reasonable cost.
The question is will the new owners see it as having enough return on the investment to do this?
That's a good question, re the investors.
As regards past releases, yep, 2018 is pretty darn good/stable. As I didn't use (still don't) the font manager, X8 was also a good release for me.
Release 2019 is why I decided to just stick with v.2018 for now. I'll stay off the merry-go-round for X amount of time. Hopefully the warts in the purchasing thing will revert and more stable releases will happen. I don't have too many years of dealing with all this crap from various software developers in my future.
My hobbies don't include computers.
For the fist time in 20 years I'm running 2 versions on my systems, 2018 and 2019. I need the improved PDF output that I've been pushing for 8 years and that finally came with 2019 but the rest of 2019 can just go away.