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 stores the content of one or more files, possibly compressed, with associated metadata such as file name, directory structure, error detection and correction information, commentary, compressed data archives, sto ...

for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

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 (for example, .txt, .mp3, .exe) that 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 file An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be c ...

s 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 statisti ...

) or

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

(

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 Lossless JPEG is a 1993 addition to JPEG standard by the Joint Photographic Experts Group to enable lossless compression. However, the term may also be used to refer to all lossless compression schemes developed by the group, including JPEG 200 ...

or JPEG XT) files, stored as a single

. Occasionally

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

, BMP, and

TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...

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

manga 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 history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

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 software, free and open-source document viewer supporting many document file formats including Portable Document Format, PDF, PostScript, DjVu, Tagged Image File Format ...

, 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 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 Archive formats Ebooks Comics formats