There are a few applications that tie me to having a MicroSoft Windows workstation. One of those is Corel Draw, the vector drawing application. I may be tied down for a while yet, but open source vector drawing applications are starting to appear. Two that I’ve seen are “Sodipodi” and “Inkscape”. Of the two, Inkscape seems the better developed at the moment.

I’ve been a user of Corel Draw since version 0.98. I illustrated a book, Daniel S. Levine’s Introduction to Neural and Cognitive Modeling using CD v0.98 and v1.0 on IBM PC class machines. Inkscape in its current version offers everything I would have needed for that job.

There are things that Corel Draw does now that I probably don’t want to do without. The ability to use node edits to crop imported bitmaps is one. But Corel should take notice that the Windows platform is not the only choice of OS out there, and move toward a multi-platform code base as soon as possible. Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are no longer the only games in town for vector drawing.