Occasionally a Corel employee would at least make an unofficial response to questions/concerns. However, it appears they have mostly gone silent. Have they been told to stop interacting with customers? Have they given up?I know they are not working on bug fixes as most bugs acknowledged over the past year have been ignored. I truly hope that X8 fixes bugs more than offering even more useless, or worse buggy, new "features".
Some bugs like the CYMK vs. RGB picker debacle in fountain fills should never have gone out in the first place. Let alone survived several updates and patches.
I guess part of my frustration is that Gerard actually called me last year when I discovering a host of bugs. He seemed very interested and acknowledge most of them. While he never outright promised that they would all be fixed, I had the distinct impression that many would be addressed.
However, it's been more that year since that contact and most are still broken. I did appreciate his outreach and did not want to pester him personally but at this point I feel I was just being pacified and that there were no intentions of fixing the bugs, especially the legacy bugs that have persisted for several versions.
I will not comment on the man or his role as I don't know him personally and I'm sure he is very smart and knows just what he can get away with (internally) and what he feels needs addressing.
But lip service is lip service and in the long run it makes me twice as angry. First for not fixing the bugs. And second for leading me to believe that they would get fixed over time. Well, it's a year later and very little was fixed. I also had contact with two other Corel employees who were delighted that I provided videos of bugs I had found. So I figured that by providing even more videos I might get a little response but again, nothing. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
David as you can image these are challenging times for software companies, I've seen needed technologies added by the new management that COST significantly, but these technologies were completely neglected by the Cowpland era management even though I know at the time the technical staff knew it was required.
The Cowpland era ushered in many and I mean MANY half ass features, many that you complain about now but in these challenging times it's a budgetary issue to chose what gets added in and what gets fixed. You need to add technology that the industry requires like proper color management, proper PDF exportation and updated filters. I know the color management issue delayed a release and most likely cost significantly more to implement than thought but without it the professional market would be gone.
You complain about a year and I'll confess I worked creating files using solid work around procedures for 10 years before professional color management was implemented. Imagine having to produce a product like CorelDraw and make it work in Windows 7 several versions, Windows 8 and 8.1 several versions, Windows 10 in several versions. With thousands of hardware combinations with a user base that in many cases that struggles with the learning curve of one of the most capable programs in the world.
There's only so much money and the software costs very little.