Quote:
Originally Posted by stumped
so I have just seen amazon's guided view reading method on a fire tablet which is impressive.
but I am used to working outside of amazon's restrictions e.g. I convert all my purchased books to epub, store them in calibre, move them with calibre companion, read in moon+..
what are my options then , to collect & read "guided view" comics on a pure android tablet:
. where to buy ( outside of amazon)- in a way that I can still use calibre etc.
. what to convert TO - if needed - or should I stick with buy from amazon and just use the Kindle for android app
. what android reader to buy ( must be ad free)- assuming moon+ is not optimised for comics
is "guided view" an industry standard or are there various proprietary versions. is it something "built in" to the book file or something that the reader app figures out how to do?
probably other questions to follow but those will help get me started
I am only interested in western comics, in English - if that's relevant - not anime, manga.... and I am UK based for purchases.
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I'm coming to this thread late and jedd seems to have answered your questions. But to answer a few more:
For downloaded comics, .cbz and .cbr are standard formats. The equivalent to ePub for e-books. All .cbz and .cbr are are renamed .zip and .rar files. Digital comics are just a folder full of images that have been zipped and had their extensions renamed.
I have a ton of digital comics, but I don't use Calibre to sort them, so I'm not sure how well the two work together.
Much like e-books in the US, Amazon has cornered the market in digital comics. ComiXology is the best place to buy comics from, though most publishers do sell comics at their sites as well (or at least they did last I checked).
When you buy at ComiXology, they fully expect you to read in their app. However, some publishers (Image comics, various indies) will let you download DRM-free cbz files. Unfortunately you have to do this with ComiXology on the web. You won't see that option in their Android app.
For the publishers that WON'T let you download, there's a Chrome plug-in you can install that will download CBZ files for you. It's what I use. You can find it here:
https://cmxlgy.wordpress.com/
One publisher of note: 2000AD does not sell on ComiXology. However, they sell directly on their website and they sell DRM-free CBZ files.
I agree with Jedd that Perfect Viewer is probaly the best comic viewer on Android. Other apps I would suggest checking out are Challenger Comics and CDisplayEX are also pretty good. All are available on Google Play. Perfect Viewer and Challenger are ad-free. CDisplay might have ads. I'm not sure. I purchased/donated to all three aps, so I don't see ads regardless.
I wouldn't recommend using guided view. It can wreck the comic reading experience. What would Guided View do to a page like the one I attached? You can pinch and zoom if you need better details.