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Corel Presentations (which is often referred to simply as Presentations) is a presentation-graphics program akin to Microsoft PowerPoint and OpenOffice.org's Impress. The current release, version X3 (Release 13 internally), is available only as part of the Corel WordPerfect Office productivity suite.
Presentations shares much of its code with WordPerfect. It originally evolved from DrawPerfect, a DOS-based drawing program released in 1990 by the now-defunct WordPerfect Corporation. The first version, WordPerfect Presentations 2.0 for DOS, appeared in 1993, and was followed by a Microsoft Windows port of the DOS version a few months later. Due to severe usability and performance issues, the first Windows version was not considered a serious contender in the market. Novell acquired WordPerfect Corporation in April 1994 and shipped an upgrade of Presentations, Novell Presentations 3.0 for Windows, as part of the Novell PerfectOffice 3.0 for Windows productivity suite in December 1994.
Corel acquired PerfectOffice in January 1996 and released the first 32-bit version of Presentations in May of that year. Since then, the company has issued five upgrades: version 8 (1997), version 9 (1999), version 10 (2001), version 11 (2003), and version 12 (2004). The last DOS release, version 2.1, appeared in 1997 as part of the Corel WordPerfect Suite for DOS.
Corel Presentations for Linux was included with the various editions of Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux. Corel no longer develops programs for the Linux operating system.
Over the years, the program's interface has evolved to resemble more closely that of Microsoft PowerPoint. Its primary strengths remain in the areas of graphics manipulation, although it does include a number of advanced transition and animation effects not found in its competitors. The program also has the ability to save to Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Systems .PDF formats, as well as to publish presentations to the Internet.
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