- Main article: Specifications
Advanced Comic Book Format (ACBF) specification is a distribution and interchange format for digital comic books. ACBF specification defines a means of representing structured and semanticaly enhanced content used in comic books. In contrast to widely used Comic Book Archive (CBR, CBZ …), content is represented in separate graphic and text layer(s) as well as comic book metadata is present.
Some of the properties of ACBF are:
• Definition of comic book metadata (title, authors, genres ...)
• Definition of comic book structure (pages, frames) as well as order in which they follow
• Indexing of comic book pages (creation of Table of Contents upon page title)
• Definition of text layer separate from background graphics as well as reading order of text areas in it
• Definition of semantics on the text layer (e.g. emphasis, code, speech, commentary …)
• Support for more text layers in one document (translations to different languages)
ACBF aims to be used as a digital comic book format that is able to properly represent any comic books content and at the same time be suitable for automatic processing, indexing, comic book collection management and conversion into other formats.
ACBF is an extension of XML. Some inspiration regarding meta-data and semantics of the text layer comes from Fictionbook (file format that is used for electronic books distribution) and ACV 2 (comic book format used by Droid Comic Viewer).
ACBF does not use any kind of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and all specifications are open.
ACBF Tools and Related ApplicationsEdit
This section links to pages with description of various tools and ACBF related applications.
- ACBF Viewer - is a viewer application capable of reading ACBF and CBZ file formats. It is written in python. Currently there are versions for Linux and Windows.
- ACBF Editor - is an editor capable of creating CBZ archives with ACBF files inside. It is written in python. Currently there are versions for Linux and Windows.
- ACBF Viewer for Android - is a port of ACBF Viewer to Android platform. It is written in python and using Kivy framework to handle user interface.
- mkacbf - is an ACBF file creation utility in the traditional UNIX form. You can create acbf file from command-line interface with it. Works under Linux.
- ComicsList- is a spreadsheet document that can be used to create ACBF metadata files easily.
How To DocumentsEdit
This section links to various pages describing creation of ACBF files, which tools to use and how to do it easily.
- ACBF Editor - Creating Metadata - this How To describes the creation of CBZ comic book archive with embedded *.acbf file which contains various comic book metadata.
- ACBF Editor - Creating Panels - this How To document describes how to create comic book frames/panels definitions, which can be used for panel by panel viewing.
- ACBF Editor - Creating Table of Contents - this document shows how to create table of contents for comic book archive.
- ACBF Editor - Creating Text Layers - this How To describes the creation of text-layers and text areas.