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 CDisplay is a freeware comic book archive viewer and sequential image viewer utility for Microsoft Windows used to view images one at a time in the style of a comic book. It popularized the comic book archive file format. CDisplay was writte ...

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 naming convention. The filename extension indicates the archive type used: * .cb7 → 7z * .cba → ACE * .cbr →

RAR RAR or Rar may refer to: * Radio acoustic ranging, a non-visual technique for determining a ship's position at sea * "rar", the ISO 639-2 code for the Cook Islands Māori language * RAR (file format), a proprietary compressed archive file format in ...

* .cbt → TAR * .cbz →

ZIP Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

Comic book archive files mainly consist of a series of image files with specific naming, typically PNG (

lossless compression Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic ...

) 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 imag ...

( lossy compression, not JPEG-LS or JPEG XT) files, stored as a single archive file. Occasionally

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

, 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 *

was the first application to support the CBR format. * CDisplayEx, inspired by

with additional viewing features. *

Comic Seer (Desktop) Comic Seer (Desktop) is a Freeware sequential image viewer application for Microsoft Windows and Linux used for viewing and reading Comic Book Archive files containing image formats, such as JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. Comic Seer is focused on the m ...

is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. *

Gonvisor GonVisor is a freeware sequential image viewer utility for Microsoft Windows used mainly to view digital images in the style of a comic book, manga or magazine. It has some additional features to create and manage archives and also to enhance ...

is a comic reader simple to use with some features to improve image quality. *

STDU Viewer STDU Viewer is computer software, a compact viewer for many computer file formats: Portable Document Format (PDF), World Wide Fund for Nature ( WWF), DjVu, comic book archive (CBR or CBZ), FB2, ePUB, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Text Compr ...

SumatraPDF Sumatra PDF is a free and open-source document viewer that supports many document formats including: Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM), DjVu, EPUB, FictionBook (FB2), MOBI, PRC, Open XML Paper Specification (Ope ...

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 com ...

supports CBZ/CBR files on Android via the ComicBook plugin available from its website. * Tachiyomi, a

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

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. *

is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. * Evince, a 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. * Zathura supports this format (as well as PDF, PostScript and others).

References

External links

* {{Ebooks Computer file formats Ebooks Comics formats