Presentations

What works

File menu (with enhanced file dialogues disabled)

New - New From Project - Close - Save - Save As
Properties
Page Setup - Print - Publish to PDF
Recent File List
Exit

Edit menu

Undo - Redo
Cut - Copy - Paste
Delete - Delete Slide(s) - Delete Layout - Delete Background - Rename Layout - Rename Background - Clear
Edit Text
Slide Layer - Layout Layer - Background Layer
Find and Replace - Go To List

View menu

Play Slide Show
Toolbars - Ruler - Grid/Guides/Snap
Crosshair - Selected Object Viewer - Reveal Codes
Slide Editor - Slide Outliner - Slide Sorter
Zoom

Insert menu

Symbol - Date/Time
Data Chart - Organization Chart
New Slide - New Layout - New Background

Format menu

Font - Paragraph - Justification - Manual Kerning
Master Gallery - Re-Apply Layout

Tools menu

Spell Checker - Grammatik - Thesaurus
QuickCorrect

Window menu

Cascade - Tile Top to Bottom - Tile Side by Side
Windows List

Help menu

PerfectExpert
About Corel Presentations

What does not

File menu (with enhanced file dialogues enabled)

Open - Save As
Print (Preview) - Internet Publisher - Send To

Edit menu

Paste Special

View menu

Show Pointer Position

Insert menu

Graphics - Shape - Text Box - Text Line - Bulleted List
Comment - Equation - Sound - Movie - Spreadsheet - File - Object

Format menu

Fonts Online - Line
Title Properties - Subtitle Properties - Bulleted List Properties - Object Properties - Slide Properties
Background Gallery - Layout Gallery

Tools menu

Macros Online - Settings

Help menu

Help Topics - Ask the PerfectExpert - Corel Web Site - Corel on the Web
Microsoft PowerPoint Help

Workarounds

What was not tested

File menu

Version Control
Show on the Go

Edit menu

Select - Arrange
Links - OLE Play Settings

View menu

Auto Select

Tools menu

Macro - Visual Basic
Trace Text - Trace Bitmap - Convert to Bitmap - Resample Bitmap
Image Tools - Blend - Quick3-D - QuickWarp - Contour Text - Convert to Polygon
Custom Audiences - SpeedLink List

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

The menus change with context. Not all were tried. All drawing functions seemed inactive. Editing of data and organisation charts was not attempted. Opening of documents in Microsoft PowerPoint format did not seem reliable. Saving such documents even less so. Maybe OK for simple presentations but too much does not work and too much crashes for any serious use.

By default, Corel Presentations uses 'enhanced' (Explorer-like) file dialogues. These do not work under Wine. Presentations will probably crash or hang opening an existing slide show or saving a new one unless the enhanced dialogues are disabled first.

Start Presentations. Select Settings... under the Tools menu. Select Environment > Options. Uncheck the "Use enhanced file dialogs" box. Click OK. Click Close.

The Tools > Settings pop-up window crashes so it is not possible to disable enhanced file dialogues from within Presentations. However, disabling enhanced file dialogues in WordPerfect also disables enhanced file dialogues in Presentations. See the guidance notes for WordPerfect 9.

WordPerfect 9 refuses to run so it is necessary to resort to editing the registry. The following shell script should do the trick:

#!/bin/bash
WINE=${WINE:-wine};
WINEPREFIX=${WINEPREFIX:-$HOME/.wine};
function disableEnhancedDialogs()
{
     echo 'REGEDIT4';

     echo "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Corel\\Shared Settings\\$1]";
     echo '"Use Explorer style file dialogs"=hex(80000009):00,00,00,00';
}

disableEnhancedDialogs 9 > ${WINEPREFIX}/dialogues.reg;

${WINE} regedit ${WINEPREFIX}/dialogues.reg;

exit;

The File > Open dialogue is unreliable. When the Open button is pressed, the button text may change to Save and a pop-up asks kindly if you wish to overwrite the document you are trying to open.

Open documents by some other means - the Recent File List and Perfect Expert work well for documents that have been opened before. To open an old document for the first time, use a console window, start Presentations from the command line giving the document's path as an argument.

Unfortunately, some of the Import menu options use the same dialogue windows as Open > File and these too are broken.

For the save of a new document, your chances of success are greater if you use File > Save As instead of File > Save.

File > Save As (or File > Save of a new document) presents a dialogue window with a drop-down list that allow you to select the format in which the document is to be saved.

This list may be empty. All documents saved so far in these circumstances have been corrupt beyond further use. Cancelling the dialogue and trying again has been known to work.

It is recommend you avoid all Property, Gallery and Settings pop-up windows.

Tabbed pop-up windows are dangerous. Generally, the tabs will be unlabelled or the label will be gibberish. Selecting a tab is more than likely to crash Presentations. It can even happen that no tabs are displayed and the crash is immediate.

Wine OLE is a work in progress. After installation of WordPerfect Office 2000 the OLE entries in the Wine registry are incomplete. Attempting to use an OLE function should result in a complaint to this effect. In some cases, Presentations will offer to install a missing feature. There is little point in accepting the offer.

For features that were genuinely not installed it is worth having a go after making sure you have saved your work.

The horizontal toolbars (the Property Bar and the Application Bar) appear not to be displayed. They are, but their height is too small to notice.

The tool bars can be restored to health by deleting corrupt entries from the Wine registry. These entries must be deleted beforehand each time Presentations is started. The following shell script should do the trick:

#!/bin/sh
ver=9;
cpc="Software\\Corel\\Corel Presentations\\${ver}\\Customize";
root="HKEY_CURRENT_USER";
wine regedit /D "${root}\\${cpc}\\Property Bar";
wine regedit /D "${root}\\${cpc}\\Tool Palette";
wine regedit /D "${root}\\${cpc}\\Toolbar";
exit;

The drawing functions do not work.

Try View > Show Pointer Position. The pointer position is displayed in the bottom left-hand corner of the window. This shows 0cm,0cm for all positions within the window. The drawing canvas is a singularity.

It is possible to drag-and-drop slide components (such as the title). However all attempts to do this seem to move the element off the top left-hand corner of the window. This is probably another consequence of the 0cm,0cm pointer position.

Finger trouble may result in a slide element being dragged-and-dropped off the top left-hand corner of the window and it is not possible to drag-and-drop the element back to where is came from. Control-Z will undo the drag-and-drop if used immediately. When it is too late to use Control-Z, try recovering the situation using Format > Reapply Layout.

Corel Presentations should be able to open and save Microsoft PowerPoint format slide shows. However, this is less an open/save operation pair and more an import/export operation pair.

Open of and save as slide shows in PowerPoint format do not work. Open complains the registry is incomplete while save complains the filters are not installed. Another consequence of OLE under Wine being a work in progress.