Where can I find the .cdr file (Corel Draw) specification or a library that writes to it

Question

I need to output something into a .cdr (Corel Draw) file format. After some time searching, I can't find any useful information on the file format, and so far I haven't found a library that I can use. I would prefer the lib to be either C++ or python, but currently I'm desperate enough to just rewrite it from another language into one that suits me, if there is one available, or writing it from scratch if there isn't and I have the specification.

Answer 1

CDR format is supported by some non-Corel software.

I started to write my own CDR specification here: https://github.com/photopea/CDR-specification/ I believe it is the only public CDR specification that exists at the moment.

Answer 2

.cdr is a proprietor extension made by Corel group so you would not be able to find the library that can help you with .cdr file due to license issues, however, corel draw accepts .DXF format which is a drawing format developed by Autodesk you can try this library and let me know if that helps

Python library for DFX file

Answer 3

.CDR is a private file format.

There are a few things you can do with CDR files. First, you can treat it like a .zip archive.

This will give you some limited information about the structure of the file. Resources, like bitmaps, and the style sheet, exist as relatively plain-text within this unzipped archive.

You have to be careful about recompressing it, as draw does not support every compression format that is known as "zip". I do not recall the exact details.

With a prepared CDR file, you could hand-write styles on objects or change bitmaps in the file this way.

If you want more control, CorelDRAW has an object model which can be used to manipulate the contents of a CorelDRAW document. CorelDRAW's object model can be interacted with from within the application.

There are multiple scripting languages supported, and you can write your own addons for CorelDRAW. In addition, I believe you can interact with CorelDRAW's object model as a 3rd party using COM.

The object model lets you do almost everything that Draw itself can do to a Draw document, and a few things more.