.pdf instead of .cbr?

[nobodyserio]

I do not understand teh fascination with the .cbr format if you could use .pdf instead. It is the better choice in all regards and used by almost all other people aiming to preserve old magazines.

[kitsunebi]

Luckily for you, you are free to convert our files to PDF for your own personal use if you like.

[Areala]

CBR/CBZ is ultimately more portable than PDF, because it's nothing but an archive of the raw images. This means our readers can convert our scans to pretty much any format they like after downloading, instead of being forced to use one format that might not translate well across different devices or operating systems. Devices like eReaders and certain smartphones don't always have the best relationship with PDFs, for instance, but it's far easier to convert the raw images to a format that device will readily accept than to perform the same gymnastics with a PDF. I personally prefer them because they let me extract individual pages easily, something I do often when it comes to ads or reviews/articles about favorite games. This is a pain with PDFs, but a snap with CBRs. Finally, CBR ensures everyone can contribute a scan to the site. A free program like 7-Zip will create and open them at no cost, whereas PDF, being a proprietary format to Adobe, requires special software that may not be available to every contributor.

 

*huggles*
Areala

[Data]

I do not understand teh fascination with the .cbr format if you could use .pdf instead. It is the better choice in all regards and used by almost all other people aiming to preserve old magazines.

 

[KiwiArcader]

Some sites prefer .CBR and others prefer .PDF files. 

 

No need to make an epic tome about the differences etc. All one needs to say is Retromags prefers .CBR. End of story

[kitsunebi]

Some sites prefer .CBR and others prefer .PDF files. 

 

No need to make an epic tome about the differences etc. All one needs to say is Retromags prefers .CBR. End of story

 

Well, except that would have been completely dismissive of the OP, which expressed confusion over how RM could have chosen CBR over PDF.  No one has attacked PDF or tried to convince anyone that they personally should prefer one format over the other, we just explained (very reasonably, I think) the reasons why RM has chosen CBR to store our files.  What format the users choose to read the mags is up to them.

[Sean697]

Quite simply, car or cbz is just a renamed extension for a zipped or .rar folder. Images are easy to extract and copy. You can also screenshot to share. You can read the magazine without comic book reader software by changing the extension back to zip or extracting the rare and using a photo viewer program native to the OS. Really the big thing you sacrifice is PDF OCR to make the text searchable, which honestly probrably not that many people use.

[MisterXiado]

OP IS AN ADMITTED FAN OF "PEEDEE-EF-FILES", FBI INTERESTED

[Data]

I do not understand teh fascination with the .cbr format if you could use .pdf instead. It is the better choice in all regards and used by almost all other people aiming to preserve old magazines.

 

I think what everyone who works hard to preserve these magazines think you are ungrateful and entitled.  Nobody likes this by the way in case you didn't know but I stand behind my previous evaluation of the formats.

[KiwiArcader]

You did forget PDF's have the ability to have bookmarking or indexing/chapters and hot linking to external content. In other words .CBR's are dumb and PDF's are intelligent      

 

Seriously though, I don't think he was being aggressive or anything like that. And it is a fair question. Most sites use PDF files and you can get freeware tools to create a PDF (even from a CBR/CBZ/zip file etc using ComicRack for example) so this question has popped up here in the past.

 

I use PDF exclusively over at OGM as I like the format and I can specify page display information within individual issues such as Cover+two page side by side viewing which I prefer. But that's just me.

 

I offered to host PDF versions of all Retromags content over there and vice versa for CBR versions of OGM content to be available here to Phillyman a while ago but I never got an answer so that never progressed any further. Probably because our libraries of content are so large that the costs of increasing Google Drive or Mediafire accounts or server storage for Retromags is rather prohibitive although there are ways around it.

[Data]

Seriously though, I don't think he was being aggressive or anything like that. And it is a fair question. Most sites use PDF files and you can get freeware tools to create a PDF (even from a CBR/CBZ/zip file etc using ComicRack for example) so this question has popped up here in the past.

 

The worse part about this thread isn't the debate on what format is best but rather that we wasted so much time on a troll.

 

[kitsunebi]

You did forget PDF's have the ability to have bookmarking or indexing/chapters and hot linking to external content.

That's true.  The Computer Gaming Worlds available at the CGW Museum all have index bookmarks, which is pretty nice.  Of course I've never seen any other mags from any other site that have contents bookmarks, and it's way too much work to do it myself to all the mags I own, but...well, I guess it's nice to have on those CGWs, anyway.

 

I use PDF exclusively over at OGM as I like the format and I can specify page display information within individual issues such as Cover+two page side by side viewing which I prefer. But that's just me.

 

Yeah, regardless of all of PDF's extra functions, everyone's preference usually comes down to which one they like better as a reader.  And that is usually the one they have the most experience using.  As a big time comic reader, I'm very familiar with the CBR format and can adjust just about anything in an instant using hotkeys.  Whereas I admit I'm not very familiar with the ins and outs of my PDF reader, so some stuff is a constant hassle, although there is probably a way around it I just don't know about (For example, I personally don't care for OGM's default display, but even though I set my PDF reader preferences to display single pages as default, it still defaults to whatever display setting the creator of the file set up, so I almost always have to manually readjust the settings every time I open a PDF I downloaded from OGM or elsewhere.)

 

One of the things I like most about CBR that I don't think(?) my PDF reader can do is to set it to display at a default pixel height, so that everything displays at the same size on my screen (disclaimer - I don't use Adobe's reader.)  PDFs let me change the size by percentages, but that makes every page/mag display at a different size depending on its original pixel height. 

 

Another useful function of CBR readers is to be able to set them to automatically apply color correction to images.  This of course doesn't apply to our beautifully edited magazines but it certainly comes in handy when reading scans of old comics that were printed on cheap newsprint paper that has faded and yellowed over the years. (Again, if PDF readers can do this, I apologize for my ignorance.)