Comical problems

[Indywesternfan]

I have been having some computer problems with Comical. All of a sudden it has stopped working. I can open the Comical page where the
files I have downloaded are stored, but I click them on and nothing happens. I have even tried uninstalling and re-installing Comical. I am
not a computer programmer, has anyone else had similar problems? I have some comic files that use Adobe reader. They work fine. Thanks.      Indywesternfan.   Brian

[Geo (RIP)]

Which platform are you running it on? PC, Mac or Linux?

Geo

[Indywesternfan]

Hello George,
      Thank you for replying to my Comical problem. I am running a PC platform. After fighting my Comical problem for 2 days, I managed
to solve my problem. I was trying to read one of the comics I downloaded from DCM and having problems and I hit the restore button on
the pop up menu. It took some time but Captain Aero finally came up. I was relieved that my Comical is working again. I am always amazed that computers work as good as they do. I use Norton's 360 to guard against downloading virus problems. I don't know how my problem started, I was reading a Police comic on Comical when I got a message that the program couldn't read the next page and then it just seemed
to freeze up. It sometimes seems like I spend half my time on the computer trying to figure out how to get something to work right. So for the moment I am glad that DCM is working great on Comical again. I think this is one of the best websites on the internet. Scoop should run
an item about it on their site.  Thanks  Brian

[Yoc]

Hi Brian,
Glad to hear you are doing better.  One note, not all the scans on the site are made the same.  Each has been created by various scanners who are using different applications to make the file.  If you find a scan that wont open for some reason it might well be the file and not your computer.  If you can try some more files and see if the problem persists.  For instance files created on the Mac platform with the standard zip application they get will often crash for people using CDisplay on a PC.  When we hear about those files we have to recreate the file and reupload it to the site.  Thankfully there are other Mac apps that can be used that don't create a problem for PC users out there.

Good luck with everything, enjoy the scans,
-Yoc

[prady_sp]

Some times CDisplay make us trouble. But its an easy viewer to read comics pages.

[watson387]

I use YAC Reader on my PC to view files. It opens most of the stuff I throw at it easily, but there is no library support if that's your thing (I prefer to archive and sort my own library on my own).  It's open-source too, which is a bonus.  Anyway here's the link: https://code.google.com/p/yacreader/

Every once in a while I come across a file I can't open. A lot of the time if you change the extensions from cbz-zip or cbr-rar you can unpack the archive, find the problem if you can (sometimes there will be a mac osx folder which causes problems for some unknown reason at times) and repack and change the file extension back. Even just a simple unpack then repack works a lot of the time. Usually if you CAN'T unpack the file, the file itself is corrupt and has nothing to do with your PC.

[Yoc]

Good advice on the mac_os files watson.
If you find any in your downloads on DCM, please consider uploading your 'fixed' versions to the site with -fixed in the name and explain the fix in the description.
We've tried to fix them all but I'm sure some have slipped by us.

[vns]

I use YAC Reader on my PC to view files. It opens most of the stuff I throw at it easily, but there is no library support if that's your thing (I prefer to archive and sort my own library on my own).  It's open-source too, which is a bonus.  Anyway here's the link: https://code.google.com/p/yacreader/

Every once in a while I come across a file I can't open. A lot of the time if you change the extensions from cbz-zip or cbr-rar you can unpack the archive, find the problem if you can (sometimes there will be a mac osx folder which causes problems for some unknown reason at times) and repack and change the file extension back. Even just a simple unpack then repack works a lot of the time. Usually if you CAN'T unpack the file, the file itself is corrupt and has nothing to do with your PC.

Hi watson387

I think your are wrong with YACReader, it have had library support since the first version: YACReaderLibrary, you can see a screenshot here :

http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/2687/92366583.jpg

Best regards

[mistercheeseknife]

My Comical always seemed to teeter on the brink of a crash -- opening files slowly, failing to open some pages within a cbr, and it got to the point that it crashed every time I used it. So I switched to Sequential. I've had good luck with Simple Comic too. These are nice simple readers that don't display a watermark or logo in the corner of the page (like "Comic Book Lover" does.)

[Yoc]

Thanks for the reports guys.
I've only used CDisplay really so I'm not much help when people ask questions about other options.

[Drahken]

Cdisplay is my reader of choice (technically the .1 unofficial build which came out after the author vanished), but a close second is mangameeya. If you like cdisplay but want something with a few more features & ability to have more than 10 bookmarks, mangameeya is the way to go.
I have tried most other ones available for windows, but didn't care for any of them. Some, like comical, were very slow & bloated. I only fired comical up 2 or 3 times, each time it took longer to launch the program than to read the actual comic. That's a slight exaggeration, but not much, it literally took a full minute (in contrast, nearly every other reader launches in less than 1 second). Others were decent, but just didn't have one or more features that I wanted.
Gonvisor is an interesting one. In addition to cbr/z files, it can open many pdf files (IIRC, it uses pdf2html to extract the images). It also includes the ability to resave comics (including pdfs ones) as a new cbr/z file. (In order to save cbr files though, you need to get the free commandline version of winrar & place it in the gonvisor directory.)

[moondood]

I've had problems with certain files on my ipad--they won't open or display any pages.

I can usually flag the file in CloudReader, the app I use to store and read scans on the ipad.

From there, I locate the original file on my hard drive--a desktop mac.  I unpack the file and can usually find some stray file in the folder that I can delete and repack the folder.

Having had trouble with uploading some of my own scans on this site, I know not to use the Mac archive utility anymore--so I use a free download called CleanArchiver.app.  It makes files that are both mac and PC friendly [is my understanding].

Thing is, the offending file opens fine on my desktop--I use SimpleComics to read scans on my mac...but on the ipad, they fail.  I do have other reader software on the ipad that may work on all files, but I like how Cloudreaders works, so I just repack the images to make an ipad version.

But lately, I've been unpacking some trouble-some files and finding no obvious offending file therein.  I run the jpegs thru a photoshop droplet to change the size to 99 percent--just to "update" the image files.  I have yet to bring them back to the ipad to see if they work, after that, but I have a feeling they will.


Kurt Hathaway
khathawayart@gmail.com

[Yoc]

Thanks for the update Kurt.
I expect our future with DCM will have to tackle these kinds of things more and more.
At least a couple of the staff have iPads... just not myself... yet.

[Captain DJ]

Hi Kurt,

If you spot any of DCM issues that don't open with your iPad etc give us a shout with link to comic on site and we can look into what could be causing it. Would be useful to take a look and try and overcome any issues by either advising uploaders better or making some backend scripts to make few changes etc.

[moondood]

I'll keep an eye out--so far no more offending files on my ipad, but I'm sure that's just circumstantial.  I'm sure to run across another one sooner or later as I rotate files on and off.

Didn't keep track of what the other ones were, so I don't have a specific file of yours to point to.  One was a Cap Marvel jr...but I don't know which issue.

I'll pay more attention to the next ones.


Kurt Hathaway
khathawayart@gmail.com