Why Are All The Magazines Saved In A Weird Format?

[alternate90sguy]

I'm grateful that you all are preserving these old magazines, but why did you save them in a weird format? What's wrong with PDF files?

[David JS]

Putting PDFs together is a great deal harder I guess. Unlike a CBZ which is just a zip file under a different name (and read by CDisplay, the comic book reader*). That's not to say there aren't PDFs on the site.

(* and easily converted to .cbds for the DS, I might add)

[triverse]

Putting PDFs together is a great deal harder I guess. Unlike a CBZ which is just a zip file under a different name (and read by CDisplay, the comic book reader*). That's not to say there aren't PDFs on the site.

(* and easily converted to .cbds for the DS, I might add)

Also, with a PDF you will need even more software to make the file, rather than just changing the extension on a zip/rar file.

Also, there is a comic book reader for PSP too (PSPComic).

[Thor]

Wait... where have I been lately?

I had no idea the DS and PSP had comic book readers. I'm going to have to check into that. Though I need to find my PSP charger before I can try that one. But I think the DS one sounds better anyway.

[David JS]

Comic BookDS V3.0. Also, a couple of replacement themes, because the supplied one is kind of ugly.

PictoDS - CBR/CBZ converter.

Of course, how well it works depends on the layout of the magazine/comic. I read American Splendor on it, The Skeptic, Computer Gaming World, Gamers Quarter; stuff with linear, narrow columns. A lot of magazines are simply incoherent at that resolution.

Edited February 21, 2009 by David JS

[Thor]

That's really cool. I've always thought it would be cool to use that on PSP. The method they had before was just to use the photo capabilities for CBR but that was rather lame. I'm glad to see that someone took the initiative to build a program for it.

[Thor]

Oooo... I just found out there is a CBR for the iPod Touch too.

I found it today for $0.99 I haven't gotten to try it out yet but I hope it will be good considering such a high res screen on that thing.

[kbf_private_joker]

Oooo... I just found out there is a CBR for the iPod Touch too.

I found it today for $0.99 I haven't gotten to try it out yet but I hope it will be good considering such a high res screen on that thing.

Post a reply giving your review. Also, will it display files on the Ipod touch or do you have to open them in a web page? I saw some PDF readers out there for the Ipod touch, but it could only open a file off a website, which is pretty limiting.

[Gnash]

It's just a zip file man. You can just decompress and join the images as you wish. I rather like cbr cbz since it's easier to read on fullscreen than pdf. I think most of the people here do too.

[kbf_private_joker]

Oooo... I just found out there is a CBR for the iPod Touch too.

I found it today for $0.99 I haven't gotten to try it out yet but I hope it will be good considering such a high res screen on that thing.

Thor, is this the reader you were talking about? http://www.bitolithic.com/ComicZeal/comiczeal.htm

Looks interesting.

[kbf_private_joker]

It's just a zip file man. You can just decompress and join the images as you wish. I rather like cbr cbz since it's easier to read on fullscreen than pdf. I think most of the people here do too.

I think we are talking about 2 different things. I understand that the CBR/CBZ format is just a container for the JPEGs. I was interested in Thor's Ipod Touch CBR reader find and was wondering how it worked.

If it's this one, http://www.bitolithic.com/ComicZeal/comiczeal.htm, it looks like it creates a special format the makes the files load faster. I'll have to try it out when I have some time this week.

[Gnash]

I think we are talking about 2 different things. I understand that the CBR/CBZ format is just a container for the JPEGs. I was interested in Thor's Ipod Touch CBR reader find and was wondering how it worked.

If it's this one, http://www.bitolithic.com/ComicZeal/comiczeal.htm, it looks like it creates a special format the makes the files load faster. I'll have to try it out when I have some time this week.

Sorry my reply was for the author of the thread. I should have quoted.

[dir417]

I, too, was confused about the CBR/CBZ formats. I stumbled upon them looking for old comic books. Now, I'm hooked. The PDF format feels old and clunky in comparison. Now, I want ALL my mags in CBR/CBZ format. And, as soon as I look through my library of old gaming mags, I may even be able to contribute some, using my wife's scanner.

[Mister Zero]

I didn't like CBDS.. it seemed too hard to read and navigate. I don't recommend it.

[Guest s1500]

The only problem I can see is the longetivity of the software many moons from now. 20 years from now, will we be able to read the formats? Nobody can say. Still, not as much of a problem as a hardware standard, ie trying to read 8 inch floppy disks when the drives haven't been manufactured in decades.

[kbf_private_joker]

The only problem I can see is the longetivity of the software many moons from now. 20 years from now, will we be able to read the formats? Nobody can say. Still, not as much of a problem as a hardware standard, ie trying to read 8 inch floppy disks when the drives haven't been manufactured in decades.

If the RAR format does end, we'll just use some other container for JPGs.

I doubt the JPG format will ever die and if it does it will only be because there is a way to losslessly convert them to something that takes less space. It just like MP3s in that there are too many people that use them for them to ever become obsolete. Maybe when our generation dies out, they'll have something else, but at that point who cares anyways. I know I'm not taking my digital crap with me to the grave

[Count_Zero]

As far as the PC reading format goes, I use ComicRack myself. It uses a bit more memory resources, but it allows me to index my issues (of various magazines and comics), as well as allowing me to use the database information to keep track of some of the information, for further indexing goodness (which issues of EGM had Sushi-X on the writing staff, which issues of Heavy Metal had stories by Mobius, etc.)

[Count_Zero]

As far as the PC reading format goes, I use ComicRack myself. It uses a bit more memory resources, but it allows me to index my issues (of various magazines and comics), as well as allowing me to use the database information to keep track of some of the information, for further indexing goodness (which issues of EGM had Sushi-X on the writing staff, which issues of Heavy Metal had stories by Mobius, etc.)

Sorry for replying to myself, but Triverse PM'd me to expand on this, and being someone who is always willing to find an excuse to write more, unless it's too hot to have the computer turned on, I'm happy to oblige.

In ComicRack, you can change the info for each issue in your library (comic book, magazine, whatever). This can be for video game magazines, issues of Amazing Spider-Man, or issues of Heavy Metal. Let's go with the first and last example.

Let's say I'm going through an issue of EGM for a recap for my blog. What I do is when I open the issue, the first thing I do is go to the Info Screen (there's a button in the top-left corner, and it's also accessible through right-clicking on the open page), and set the title of the magazine (EGM, Amazing Spider-Man, Heavy Metal, whatever), the month and year the issue was published, and the issue number and (if necessary), volume number.

I will also set an issue specific title, usually related to the content of the issue, or a storyline title, or in the case of an anthology book a notable story (Mortal Kombat Issue, title of the Spider Man story, first installment of Den, in the case of my 3 examples, respectively).

Once I get to the staff pages, I'll then fill out the necessary information for the creative portion of the comic. In the case of video game magazines, the EIC and head Editor go in the editorial category, and the rest of the associate editors and writers go in the writers category, and if there's a cover artist, he or she will go in the cover artist category. Standard comic books like Amazing Spider-Man are a little easier, because that's what ComicRack is designed to deal with. Stuff like Heavy Metal, I just try to put in the writers and artist for each story in order of appearance (and I also try to make sure to put the character names in the relevant tab, so I can find all the Den stories quickly later).

Everything else (age rating, publisher, format) is pretty straightforward, though I did type in a "magazine" format for Video Game magazines, as well as tagging them "Video Game Magazine".

I'd do screen shots, but I wanted to address this before I turned my computer off for a bit (it's been on all day, temperatures were above 80, and I didn't have the AC on, so I wanted to cut the fans some slack.)

[loupgarou1317]

New here, but have been using MMCE also known as Mangameeya for windows for a while similar to comic book reader

and very easy to use on most formats.........the format just works out easier to view and make.....I think....

[johndoee]

so many c# image formats we can make use of , it's just pdf is the most common and easy one. i like bitmap with high quality.

[E-Day]

CBR/CBZ is easier than PDF to create.

[Jie]

I'm grateful that you all are preserving these old magazines, but why did you save them in a weird format? What's wrong with PDF files?

PDF files are a bit too unwieldy when reading. And, as others mentioned, they take way too much time in the conversion. I am using CDisplay to read .cbr files and a simple Page Up and Page Down takes me to one page, instead of having to resize and scroll in Reader.

[KiwiArcader]

I always find it amusing when someone dredges up a four year old thread.

Seriously though, some people prefer PDF's as they can incorporate things like bookmarks, indexes etc if you choose to create them that way or they can incorporate OCR'd text but they require a 3rd party program to create them while others prefer CBR/CBZ because they are just a renamed rar/zip file with makes them easy to create by anyone with half a brain but you can't do anything fancy with them at all. Different strokes .....

[E-Day]

It would be great to offer both, but with the volume we have, it's just not possible.

[Ferneu]

Sorry, but there is really no reason to use PDF. Ever! I think the only reason we still see it being used as a container is because the fella who is doing the favor of archiving the pictures simply did not know a better way to achieve what he really wanted, which was to pack all those images on a single file and be able to read it. That is OK, not every one is a developer and know how hard it is to parse a PDF file. Been there, done that. It is awful. ADOBE keeps pushing useless features on the format that helps no one at all.

Just use Acrobat Reader, one might say. I say thee nay! No one should have to install something so big just to be able to see a couple o pictures. Thank god there are free alternatives out there like the lightning fast (and small) Sumatra PDF.

Just like PDF, the zip format is out there in the public domain. It still is not the ideal format for what we want, which is a way to store a bunch of compressed files in a single archive, but it is good enough. As long as the guy packing the files do not do something stupid as trying to compress the data. And there is also RAR, which is also good enough. Both have plenty of libraries capable of decoding the data, and RAR Labs even provides one for us for free, unlike ADOBE. Many comic book readers are able to handle these archive formats. And unlike Acrobat, they were build for that sole purpose, to display a sequence of image files. It is no wonder they do a better job. And we must not forget that, if anything else fails, just extract the image files and do whatever you want with them. Try doing that with a PDF. Possible, but annoying, to say the least.

But it would still be even better if the major comic book readers out there united and agreed upon a no frills pack format. A simple one, because the ones already there (specially in the *nix world) have too many useless features for us, making the implementation too complicated. What we need is simply a format that had something like

MagicValueIdentifyingTheFile, NumberOfFiles, OffsetOfFirstFile, FileSize1, FileName1, ..., FileSizeN, FileNameN, FileContent1, ..., FileContentN

No compression, no unnecessary features, nothing. A simple format capable of storing just a sequence of files, with a little header to allow us to jump to the file we need. Then we could give that format a "standard" extension and ask it to be included on WinRAR and 7zip. And that is it. All comic book readers would be able to load the data even faster, the implementation would be trivial, so there would be no more need to rely on external libraries or waste time trying to figure out an archive format and since it would be on (at least) two of the major archive creators/extractors out there. And if one was not happy with his archive, all he would have to do was to open it using 7zip, extract the files and do whatever he wanted with it, just like we are capable of doing with CBR and CBZ.

By the way, before someone complains about what I told about not using compression because without it their lossless files would be too big, 3 little letters for you: PNG

Summing up: PDF sucks (in general) and sucks even more as a stream archiver. Do not use it. Never.

Never!