Comic Book Archive file
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Filename extension | .cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cba, .cb7 (containers) |
|---|---|
| Internet media type | application/x-cbr |
| Type of format | Multimedia, archive file |
Comic Book Archive file or Comic Book Reader File is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, especially comic books. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.
Comic Book Archive files mainly consist of a series of image files, typically PNG (lossless compression) or JPEG (lossy compression) files, compressed using one of several popular methods. The file extension indicates the archive format used:
Rare:
Changing the Comic Book Archive extension to its corresponding archive format usually will allow the user to extract the image files as they would normally do with an archive. (i.e. changing .cbz to .zip will allow the images to be extracted like a zip archive)
Occasionally GIF, BMP, and TIFF files are seen. The file names inside an archive are usually numbered in ascending order according to the original page number.
Comic Book Archive viewers offer various dedicated functions to read the content, like one page forward/backwards, go to first/last page, zoom or print.
CDisplay was the first application to support the CBR format. CDisplayEx, a free and open source clone of CDisplay, expanded upon many features of the original CDisplay. Coview has been designed with the comic as the most important element, removing anything else from the interface. Current applications for Windows include ComicRack, an ITunes like reader and manager for comics, and STDU Viewer, which supports other formats as well. For users of the GNOME desktop environment, the Evince document viewer includes support for the format and users of the KDE 4 desktop environment can use Okular. For Mac OS X, several reader programs are available, including ComicBookLover and the open source Simple Comic and Comical. For Windows Mobile users Pocket Comic is available.
Some applications, like ComicRack, support additional tag information in the form of embedded XML files in the archive. These files can include additional information like artists or story information.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Comic Book Archive file at the Open Directory Project
- Comical - A multi-platform open source comic book archive reader.
- STDU Viewer - Freeware documents viewer, which support comic book archive.
