Comic book archive

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;[1] since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.

Comic book archive file
Comic book archives may be accessed via tablets or iPhones.
Filename extension.cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cba, .cb7 (containers)
Internet media type
application/vnd.comicbook+zip [.cbz only], application/vnd.comicbook-rar [.cbr only]
Type of formatMultimedia, archive file
Container forImages
StandardNone

Design

Comic book archive files mainly consist of a series of image files with specific naming, 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. Also it can contain optional metadata stored as XML file, but there's no open format or DTD schema for it.

The filename extension indicates the archive type used:

  • .cb7 → 7z
  • .cba → ACE
  • .cbr → RAR[2]
  • .cbt → TAR
  • .cbz → ZIP[3]

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.[4] These files can include additional information like artists, story information, table of contents or even a separate text layer for comic book translations.[5]

Adoption

Windows
  • Calibre e-book reader can view and convert comic archives to different formats, but 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.
  • 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 and convert to different formats.
  • Simple Comic, an open source comic viewer with many features including archive reading support.

Android
  • FBReader supports CBZ/CBR files on Android via the ComicBook plugin available from its website.[6]
  • Moon+ Reader supports CBZ and CBR files.
  • Readler can read CBZ/CBR files ad-free.
  • Tachiyomi supports CBZ files.[7]

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 document viewer, includes support for the format.
  • 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.

See also

References
  1. CDisplay Image Display Download.com
  2. "CBR file extension". Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  3. "CBZ file extension". Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  4. "Metadata for Digital Comics".
  5. "Advanced Comic Book Format project page".
  6. "FBReader ComicBook plugin". FBReader.
  7. "Tachiyomi Documentation".
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