[GeoRW]

Hi guys,

as you may know from my other posts, I'm the guy who created Advanced Comic Book Format (ACBF).
I'm curious if you wouldn't mind if I will start adding ACBF metadata to comics here. In the past I converted one comic book from here (The Purple Claw #1) to ACBF, which had all the metadata (author, genre, publisher ...) as well as comic book panels defined.
Library with all the searching and filtering capability can be based on this metadata. And user can read the comic book zoomed in on panel by panel, if desired. I'm maintaining my own library of digital comic books in ACBF format and would like to start adding there some treasures from here.
I think it would be good to upload the comic books I add metadata to to here as well so someone else can use my work and maybe someone will do the same and add some metadata that in turn I can use.

I wouldn't modify the comic books here in any way, there would be just one *.acbf file added to the archive. The only thing that I would possibly do is to change CBR to CBZ as RAR is proprietary technology and CBR is not supported in ACBF Viewer for Android application which I use for reading, but if you prefer I can still compress and upload it as CBR here. Comic books would still be readable by any software that can read CBZ files even if they will not make use of the metadata added.
I can upload the "The Purple Claw #1" which I already have done for you to review and let me know if it's fine.

Thanks

[movielover]

Personally, I say no to it, but you'd have to see what Mark says.

[narfstar]

Mark is the tech guy who would understand all the details and he is the boss. I downloaded the editor for windows but all it would do was open the cover of the book I was trying it on. The reader works OK on windows.

[GeoRW]

Mark is the tech guy who would understand all the details and he is the boss. I downloaded the editor for windows but all it would do was open the cover of the book I was trying it on. The reader works OK on windows.

Editor is for adding metadata to the comic book archive, not for editing particular images. You can also create table of contents or draw frames/panels definitions there. What did you expect it to do?

[GeoRW]

BTW, if you have Android device you could try ACBF Viewer for Android which is faster and better for panel by panel viewing.
List of comic books which have ACBF metadata to try it on can be found on the Wiki page. I'm hosting those mostly on my own website. As I'm in EU, I'm not sure about copyright status of comic books from here, if I can host those too. But if people don't like the idea, I can still try to do it on my own website and create a thread here in the forum, where those books can be downloaded and all the details what has been added there in case there's anyone interested.

[paw broon]

I hope you don't mind me butting in on this but I just don't understand any of it.  Is this new ACBF Viewer an alternative to, say, Perfect Viewer or Sequential Image Display?  If so, what does it do that PV doesn't.  Also, I haven't a clue about "metadata".  For the most part, most comics I read, I will know, or be able to quickly find out, writer, artist, publisher details.  I know you talk about panel by panel viewing and have to ask what is so new about that?  I can zoom in on any panel in a comic as it is. 
I have a feeling I'm missing something here but don't know what it is.  It's like having a car, I can drive the thing but what goes on under the bonnet is for a mechanic to know.  I just want it to work when I need it.

[narfstar]

I thought that the editor would allow me to take a comic page and mark the panels for frame by frame viewing.

[GeoRW]

I hope you don't mind me butting in on this but I just don't understand any of it.  Is this new ACBF Viewer an alternative to, say, Perfect Viewer or Sequential Image Display?  If so, what does it do that PV doesn't.  Also, I haven't a clue about "metadata".  For the most part, most comics I read, I will know, or be able to quickly find out, writer, artist, publisher details.  I know you talk about panel by panel viewing and have to ask what is so new about that?  I can zoom in on any panel in a comic as it is. 
I have a feeling I'm missing something here but don't know what it is.  It's like having a car, I can drive the thing but what goes on under the bonnet is for a mechanic to know.  I just want it to work when I need it.

With metada you can search through your library quickly and find particular comics and start reading them. When you import a comic book into library in ACBF viewer, it imports all the metadata with it (authors, genres, series, publisher, publish date, story description ...) as all this metadata is embedded in the comic archive itself. You can see the screenshots from viewer and its library here to get an idea. It is even capable of creating different statistics and nice charts on the library metadata.
Regarding panel by panel viewing, when panels are defined, you don't have to zoom in manually, the viewer knows where the panel is and zooms in there. It's like "guided view" in I think Comixology they call it like that. It's better to try it, it's harder to describe. But for this I recommend Android viewer as it can smoothly animate between panels.
Another feature is to have a table of contents (you give particular pages a title). I often have bigger files containing the whole volume of particular comic and with table of contents you can quickly jump to particular issue or just see what is inside.
Another feature is text-layers with translations to different languages, you can switch between, but that might not interest you.

ACBF viewer makes use of all these metadata but you can still read the comics with it even if they don't have those.

[GeoRW]

I thought that the editor would allow me to take a comic page and mark the panels for frame by frame viewing.

It can do. There's a toolbar icon on the top,which will take you to the frames editor window. Then on the left side, you have list of available pages. Note that frames can't be created on coverpage for the time being, so select some other page. Then to draw a frame you click inside on the surface of the image on the right. You need to draw a rectangle (at least a triangle), so click on several places (you will see a small square put there everytime you do). Then to enclose the rectangle, you need to click on the same spot (that first small square) where you started.

I have created "How To" tutorials on ACBF Wiki page (there are youtube videos included you may watch (switch to HD resolution and watch the videos full screen to see it properly):

ACBF - Creating Metadata
ACBF - Creating panels
ACBF - Creating Table of Contents

[paw broon]

That is a bit clearer, but if I have for instance a big .cbz file collection of an obscure British character, say over 100 pages, I would have to add the metadata myself.  Unfortunately, that is double work as I have to go and look for it anyway.  Once I have the data, it doesn't matter where it is and I'm not sure I want to footer about with rare scans.  You will probably consider me a dinosaur, but my current viewers are relatively simple and they work. I'll give your viewer a go and if it does the basic job of reading a comic better than my other options, I'll report back and keep using it.  But I don't fancy all that adding stuff to scans.

[GeoRW]

... and I'm not sure I want to footer about with rare scans ...

Images (scans) are not touched in any way, there's only one *.acbf file added into CBZ archive, images are left intact. But you should always have backups in case there's let's say power outage when the file is being saved.

... I would have to add the metadata myself.  Unfortunately, that is double work as I have to go and look for it anyway.  Once I have the data, it doesn't matter where it is ...

If you don't want to maintain your own library and make use of the metadata there, then it does not make much sense to you. But when let's say you create a CBZ file including metadata there, then other people can use this metadata - it will show in the ACBF Viewer once they import the comic book automatically (they don't have to search for information about it).

Even a website like this could extract the metadata from CBZ file automatically and display it. Currently they need to maintain a separate database with all information about the comic books and have each entry linked to particular comic book file. They need to be careful about having a proper database backup in case of a disaster. With metadata in comic book archives, it is just a matter of reimporting these.

BTW, thank you for the feedback. I didn't do much work on let's say marketing this stuff and how the users may perceive it. It took several years to get the project this far and there's still a lot of work to do to make this technology user friendly for everyone. But eventually more users will find it useful.

[paw broon]

Sorry, old bean but having looked it up, I don't know what to download for my pc. It's all too complicated for me.

[GeoRW]

Sorry, old bean but having looked it up, I don't know what to download for my pc. It's all too complicated for me.

Depends what operating system you're on.

• If on Windows then from download page you can download "ACBF Viewer ver. 1.03 built executable for Windows 32-bit" and "ACBF Editor ver. 0.5 built executable for Windows 32-bit". You unzip it and there's *.exe file inside which you just run.
• On linux, you need to install packages with libraries the program depends on, then run the installation script. Another option (for Ubuntu users) is to add repository where ACBF Viewer and ACBF Editor packages are avaialble without having to run installation script from download page. Installation is described on Wiki page
• For Android, you need to download APK installation file (ACBFViewerforAndroid.apk) and run it on your Android device or you can look up the ACBF Viewer for Android in Google Play and install from there, but for the one on Google Play you'll need to pay 50 cents EUR or I think it is 0.99 USD for people from US.