For the past few months I have not been able to open .ai files created with the most recent version of Adobe Illustrator. I opened a ticket with tech support and they are COMPLETELY USELESS. It doesn't help that they don't speak and understand English.
The files I can't open will open and close just fine with Illustrator. However, they just hang when I try to open in Coreldraw 2019. I have all the latest patches loaded and I have uninstalled and reinstalled Coreldraw. If I open these files with Illustrator and save them to a legacy format then Coreldraw will open the file. This shows that they are NOT compatible with ai files like they advertise. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS BUG COREL???????
The CorelDraw import filter for Adobe Illustrator files is always going to be at least a version or two behind. I’ll be surprised if CorelDraw 2020 is able to import AI CC 2020 files, much less be able to support newer features like gradients on line stokes or free form gradient fills. When AI CC 2021 is released later this fall I guarantee CorelDraw 2020 will not be able to import those files. That’s just how it goes. It’s not a hardship to have to save AI files in older “legacy” versions so they can be imported by CorelDraw.
ktom said:WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS BUG COREL?
And, for what it's worth, this is not considered to be a "bug", and it will not be "fixed" in Draw 2019.If we are lucky, they have been able to adjust the Draw 2020 import filter to also support later Illustrator versions, but there is no guarantee and there never will be.Here's an excerpt from the Draw 2019 help section, technical notes:You can import AI file formats up to and including Adobe Illustrator CS6.For files saved in Adobe Illustrator CS or higher with PDF-compatibility, text can be imported as text or curves.Objects with gradient fills that were created in CS5 may not appear correctly when imported.Corel programs cannot import AI files containing bitmaps linked as EPS files.
When CorelDRAW 2019 was released, there was no AI 2020, so it is absurd to pretend it was already compatible. It is a simple matter of logic. It would be like Corel launching a new version tomorrow and was already compatible with AI 2021. It is not logical to pretend something like that.
I understand that for many users it would have been useful for Corel to make an update last year including that compatibility. But they are internal decisions, perhaps at that point they preferred to focus on the next version.
Speaking in general, not related to this post or anyone in particular, I see that there are people who expect CorelDRAW to be the same as illustrator. But CorelDRAW is not and should not be a cheap imitation of another program. It does not have the obligation to resemble others, nor have the same effects