A comic book archive or comic book reader file (also called sequential image file) is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for comic books. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay sequential image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.
Video Comic book archive
Design
Comic book archive files mainly consist of a series of image files, typically PNG (lossless compression) or JPEG (lossy compression) files, stored as a single archive file. Occasionally GIF, BMP, and TIFF files are seen. Folders may be used to group images.
The file name extension indicates the archive type used:
- .cb7 -> 7z
- .cba -> ACE
- .cbr -> RAR
- .cbt -> TAR
- .cbz -> ZIP
Comic book archive files are not a distinct file format; only the file name extension differs from a standard file of the given archive type.
Comic book archive viewers typically offer various dedicated functions to read the content, like one page forward/backwards, go to first/last page, zoom or print. Some applications support additional tag information in the form of embedded XML files in the archive or use of the ZIP comment to store additional information. These files can include additional information like artists, story information, table of contents or even a separate text layer for comic book translations. Efforts, such as the Comic Metadata (CoMet) Format, have been made to define an open standard.
Maps Comic book archive
Adoption
Windows
- Calibre can view and convert to different formats. Does not handle .cbr or .cb7 formats.
- CDisplay was the first application to support the CBR format.
- CDisplayEx inspired by CDisplay with additional viewing features.
- ComicRack is a full featured comic reader that supports cbz/zip/cbr/rar/cbt/tar/cb7/7z/pdf/djvu formats.
- Comic Seer (Desktop) is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop.
- Cover is an UWP app which support CBZ/ZIP, CBR/RAR, 7Z/CB7, CBT, PDF, EPUB
- Gonvisor is a comic reader simple to use with some features to improve image quality.
- MComix is a fork of Comix.
- STDU Viewer
- SumatraPDF
Mac
- Calibre can view and convert to different formats.
- Simple Comic, an open source comic viewer with many features including archive reading support.
iOS
- Chunky Comic Reader, an iPad only app that handles CBZs, CBRs, CBTs, EPUBs, and PDFs. It will also support any contained CBI/ComicbookLover or ComicRack information.
- ComicFlow is a free comic viewer app that supports .cbr, .cbz and pdf files.
- Comic Landscape is a paid comic viewer app that supports .cbr, .cbz, .zip, .rar and .pdf files that specializes in displaying images in landscape mode (in addition to portrait mode).
- Comic Glass, a paid comic viewer app can read comic book archives as well as PDFs.
- Comic Viewer, a paid app that supports, .cbr, .cbz, .rar, and .zip files.
- Comic Zeal handles CBZs, CBRs and PDFs.
- iComics, a paid iPad and iPhone app that handles CBZs, CBRs, CBTs, EPUBs, and PDFs.
- Manga Storm CBR, a free comic/manga viewer app for iOS that supports comic book archives, EPUBs, and PDFs. Also supports importing content directly from various cloud services and contains many useful features.
- YACReader supports ZIP, RAR, CBZ, CBR and PDF files. It also support several cloud services and can browse, remotely read and import from Macs/PCs using YACReaderLibrary.
Android
- FBReader supports CBZ/CBR files on android with the comic book plugin available from the website.
Unix-like
- Calibre can view and convert to different formats.
- Comic Seer (Desktop) is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop.
- Comix is a full featured comic book viewer and organizer.
- Evince document viewer, includes support for the format.
- MComix is a fork of Comix.
- Okular can view many formats, including PDF and CBR, and is included in the KDE Software Compilation.
- MuPDF is a cross-platform lightweight PDF, XPS, and E-book viewer.
MorphOS
- RNOComics is a full featured comic book reader that supports CBR, CBZ, CBT, and about 100 other archiving formats.
AmigaOS 4
- RNOComics is a full featured comic book reader that supports CBR, CBZ, CBT, and about 100 other archiving formats.
See also
- Comparison of image viewers
References
External links
- Comic book archive at Curlie (based on DMOZ)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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