Custom Macro/Plug-in Needed -- will pay for development

We develop a digital asset management product that manages images, video, audio, graphics and other types of rich media files.

We’re looking for help in the development of a VBA or C# macro/plug-in to CorelDRAW that will do the following:

1. Create a “Save As…” like menu item. We need to be able to create a Zip file (CDR can be used as it is a Zip file format) containing the current image (as a .cdr file), a PDF (to use for multi-page previews), a thumbnail, the metadata (in Corel’s XML format), and possibly other raster or vector versions of the image and package them all up into this ZIP/CDR file. Our system will unpack this and get what it needs from each of the components, using one of the images for downstream conversion to other file formats.

2. We understand that modifying the CDR file (which we know to be a ZIP file containing the actual image – which we don’t touch – a thumbnail and XML metadata) is subject to change by Corel. Our intent is to add the PDF into the Zip file, extract it on our side so as to put the file “back to how it was”. We’ve tested this and it appears that CorelDRAW ignores the additional PDF file and works fine both opening and saving these modified files. If Corel changes the format going forward, we’ll update the components to handle that. So that is not an issue to us. We just need help creating the plug-in that can insert all of this stuff into the ZIP (CDR) file.

3. I have tested that a CDR file is a Zip format and a PDF can be inserted into it without affecting the Corel Graphic, thumbnail or metadata. It appears to open fine in CorelDRAW and even saves updates to the CDR file, without touching the PDF. In these cases, where a CDR already has a PDF included, upon re-save, the old PDF needs to be replaced with a new one.

4. An option would be to also include saved or exported SVG and SWF renditions in the ZIP/CDR file. We can handle multiple renditions in our product.

5. If it is multi-page document, then we may need to create renditions of each page in a defined file format that can be saved into the ZIP/CDR.

6. In the case where the CDR file contains or links in other files, the client would like us to treat the file as if it were a “compound document” – meaning it has references to other placed art or files. InDesign files are handled like this in our product. That is, if the CDR file contains a link to another image, PowerPoint, SVG, etc. file the plug-in would collect all of those links and the files they point to, include them as separate files in the CDR (or ZIP). In our product we would relate them to each other as a “Compound Asset”. I’ve seen that CorelDRAW has a “Collect for Output” notion that may be able to be used, but if not we’d need a similar capability to collect the referenced files into one place and insert them into the CDR/ZIP file.

7. As the CDR file is a ZIP file, we need to know if any special Zip file handler / program needs to be used or is recommended in order to insert, manipulate or extract the files from the CDR. We would use this capability as part of a component we would build to extract the files from the CDR file. I have tried one and it seemed to work fine, but any insight on this would be appreciated.

8. Lastly, we need to determine:
a. if there any special considerations for Unicode file names and/or content?
b. And also whether these CDR files handle right-to-left multi-byte characters correctly
We have customers that have multi-byte / left-to-right file names and content which may have left to right text and are attempting to understand whatever we can about Corel’s support for this.

Given this information, I’d like to understand if this is a component someone in this forum would be interested and able to build for us, as a paid engagement, and if so, what it would cost to have this component developed.

Regards,

Joshua

did you implement features?