Newbie - Good Sequential Art Viewer?

Forum: Apps
Topic: Newbie - Good Sequential Art Viewer?
started by: lone wolf

Posted by lone wolf on July 24 2007,05:08

I am looking for a good, easy to install/compile program for cbr/cbz files that will work on DSL. Any recommendations?

Posted by stupid_idiot on July 24 2007,15:58

Do look out for 'MyDSL->Testing->cdisplay.tar.gz'. I submitted it last week, so it should be up soon.
It is modified from the original cdisplay, < here >. It has become very different from the original - not radically - but in terms of commands used, etc, etc. Anyway, the original served as the base, and moreover, I like the name 'cdisplay' very much.
xzgv is used as the image viewer.
At present there is 'scansreader.uci'
(MyDSL->Testing->scansreader.uci), which I once thought was the best solution, but I have since found that a script does the job better and more efficiently (scansreader is itself an image viewer - with the 'cdisplay' script, we can just use xzgv which we already have), so I have submitted 'cdisplay.tar.gz' with the intention of replacing this. If you compare the two, I believe you will find cdisplay feels better to use. But scansreader is still worth a try. It's weakness is that it is ugly. The usability is good. Anyway, I have requested that 'scansreader.uci' be taken down once 'cdisplay.tar.gz' gets posted. That is the current situation.
Anyway, I am very satisfied with my modifed version of cdisplay, so, do look out for it. I test it on comics/manga extensively - I am using it on a daily basis. .7z, .cba/.ace, .cbr/.rar, .cbt/.tar, and .cbz/.zip formats are supported - the external program is called, images are decompressed to '/tmp/cdisplay-$$/' and the folder is removed when the script terminates. I believe you will also like it very much.
(I submitted an updated version of 'cdisplay.tar.gz' just now. I only added the `-f` switch to the `xzgv` command - currently it is `xzgv -rt` - so that xzgv will start in fullscreen; this is more convenient, moreso when you have lots of archives to browse through - you do not have to resize the xzgv window when opening each of them, if it is already fullscreen.)
(Regarding the external decompression programs, I have also submitted the following extensions together with 'cdisplay.tar.gz':
MyDSL->Testing->unace.tar.gz
MyDSL->Testing->unrar.tar.gz
MyDSL->Testing->p7zip.tar.gz
So, you can choose which you want.
'cdisplay.tar.gz' is only 1KB in size - It is just a script.
DSL already has `unzip`, so .cbz/.zip archives are supported directly.)

There are other good programs, but they all require gui libraries not found in DSL.
< Comical > (wxGTK with GTK2 required - although it compiles successfully with wxgtk1, it does not run properly)
< Comix > (GTK2 + PyGTK [Python required])
< qcomicbook > (QT 3.3)
(The `qcomicbook` program itself is quite small - a few hundred KB. I have tried compiling QT 3.3; the library compressed as '.tar.gz' is around 3MB in size. If I submit QT as an extension, there are also other QT-dependent extensions [Opera, etc, etc] that can benefit from sharing one library. So, having `qcomicbook` in DSL is quite possible - just a matter of having free time to polish it up.
Apart from all this, qcomicbook is a very nice program - good usability, useful features, etc.
I haven't installed Comical or Comix before, so I can't comment.)

Posted by lone wolf on July 29 2007,20:25

Thank you very much for your help and for the app. I look forward to trying it out!