Comic Book Archive file
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| 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 ComicBook 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.
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[edit] Design
Comic Book Archive files mainly consist of a series of image files, typically PNG or JPEG files, compressed using one of several popular methods. The file extension indicates the archive format used:
.cbr has a slight advantage for size while .cbz has a slight advantage for compression speed. Because compression only happens once, .cbr is the preferred format due to the space-time trade off.
Rare:
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.
[edit] Adoption
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, expands upon many features of the original CDisplay. 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. Comical and Comix are other easy-to-use GUI comic book viewers . For Mac OS X, several reader programs are available, including FFView [1], Jomic[2], and ComicBookLover[3], an iTunes-like application for CBR and CBZ archives. The Mac OS X image viewer Xee also supports both Comic Book Archive formats. There is also a Windows based iTunes-like application called ComicRack written by cYo, it is an all-in-one solution to read and manage your eComic library
Changing the Comic Book Archive extension to its corrisponding 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)
[edit] Notable examples
The following comics are Creative Commons and can be used to test Comic Book Archive viewers.
- The Locksmith by Sean Kennedy (radio personality) and Marc Rodskov.
- Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now by Cory Doctorow and various artists (IDW Publishing, 2008). Available in cbr.
- Misery Depot by Hermes Pique and Juan Romera (Papyrus Comics, 2008). Available in cbr and cbz in various languages.
- Therefore Repent! by Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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