A comic book archive or comic book reader file (also called sequential image file) is a type of

archive file In computing, an archive file is a computer file that is composed of one or more files along with metadata. Archive files are used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compre ...

for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are ofte ...

s. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay sequential image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.

Design

Comic book archive is not a distinct file format. It is a

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...

naming convention. The filename extension indicates the archive type used: * .cb7 → 7z * .cba → ACE * .cbr → RAR * .cbt → TAR * .cbz → ZIP Comic book archive files mainly consist of a series of image files with specific naming, typically PNG ( lossless compression) or

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image ...

(

lossy compression In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

, not JPEG-LS or JPEG XT) files, stored as a single

. Occasionally GIF, BMP, and TIFF files are seen. Folders may be used to group images in a more logical layout within the archive, like book chapters. 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.

Adoption

Windows

* Calibre e-book reader can view and convert comic archives to different formats * CDisplay was the first application to support the CBR format. * CDisplayEx, inspired by CDisplay with additional viewing features. * Comic Seer (Desktop) is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. * Gonvisor is a comic reader simple to use with some features to improve image quality. * STDU Viewer * SumatraPDF

Mac

* Calibre can view, library manage and convert to different formats.

Android

FBReader FBReader is an e-book reader for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Android, and other platforms. It was originally written for the Sharp Zaurus and currently runs on many other mobile devices, like the Nokia Internet Tablets, as well as desktop comp ...

supports CBZ/CBR files on Android via the ComicBook plugin available from its website. * Tachiyomi, a manga reader, supports CBZ/CBR files, but does not support CBR files using the RAR5 format.

Unix-like

* Calibre can view and convert to different formats. * Comic Seer (Desktop) is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. *

Evince Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a free and open source document viewer supporting many document file formats including PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI. It is designed for the GNOME desktop environment. The dev ...

, a document viewer, includes support for the format. *

Okular Okular is a multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. It is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, ...

can view many formats, including PDF and CBR, and is included in the

KDE Software Compilation The KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) was an umbrella term for the desktop environment plus a range of included applications produced by KDE. From its 1.0 release in July 1998 until the release of version 4.4 in February 2010, the Software Compi ...

. * MuPDF is a cross-platform lightweight PDF, XPS, and E-book viewer. * Zathura supports this format (as well as PDF, PostScript and others).

References

External links

* {{Ebooks Computer file formats Ebooks Comics formats