Good program for reading comic scans (like the heman ones here), it can even read them straight from zip and rar files. http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay

Very nice One thing I've always wondered about is this trend (in many, many programs) to extract archives 'on the fly'. What's the point?

In many progs, it's a space issue. If you can read files directly from an archive, then you can keep all your files in archives and save disc space.

That doesn't really apply in this case since jpgs really don't compress any further in an archive (I've been able to get archived jpgs reduced by about 5% under ideal conditions, but that's not nearly enough to be of any real consideration). The main thing with comic scans is organization. Instead of 50 folders with 30 files apiece, or a single folder with 50 issues in it which you have to sift through to find the one you want to read, you can simply have 50 files with each issue being self contained. It saves the step of extracting the files before being able to read them (obviously). It also makes navigation easier since you don't have to go through a dozen levels of folders just to get to the ones you want. (Case in point, the heman comics here. Some of them are in folders in the archives, some aren't. This either makes for a mess when you're extracting the files, or makes it a pain when you're reading them because the actual scans for a given issue are now 3 folders deep.)
It's also useful if you have some zipped scans on a cd. (I have a bunch of transformers comics on cd. Most are not archived, but for some reason, some of them are.) Normally you'd have to unzip those to your HD in order to read them, but with this you can simply read them straight from the archives.

Bottomline, the two main reasons for it are spac (in most cases) and organization.

Edited by Cypherswipe at 18:31 on December, 14th 2003

Well, you're trading disk space against CPU time and memory. While all that is usually there in abundance these days, the latter is easier to get into trouble with (or to say it from a different angle: if you get into trouble with one of these things, disk space is easiest to scale). So much for the first point.

On file organization, you might have a point. I don't mind going through very 'deep' directory structures (on the contrary), but the alternative can't hurt in this case.

Could you name the ones which aren't? Because I thought I had all put them into directories... must be some of the very first ones.

On the contrary, cpu time and memory are easier to deal with because of the fact that you are only using it temporarily. If you're really low on it, you can simply shut down other progs until you're finished reading your comics or whatever. With disc space however, the only way to gain more is to permanently delete stuff (whether you simply delete it, or put it on a cd, then delete it from your harddrive). The cpu time and memory issues are much easier to deal with.

As far as the heman comics, I'll have to go through them. When I first extracted them, I wound up with some that were in their own folders and some that were just the files, and many of the files had the same filename even though they were from different issues and thus overwrote each other. Once I realized what a mess that was, I deleted it all and re-extracted the files, this time having each extracted to it's own directory. This worked well for the ones that were just the files, but with the other ones I now had to navigate through an empty directory to get to the directory with the comic in. (ie Instead of just "heman comicsissue1page1.jpg" it's "heman comicsissue1issue1page1.jpg" "heman comicsissue2issue2page1.jpg", etc.)

It's easy to bog down every CPU with just one simple program. There is nothing to shut down then. Scaling impossible.

As for the comics, when did you download them? Three years ago or recently?

About 4~6 months ago I believe. It wasn't "recently" but it was a few months after you put up the anti-leech thing and started only having a few available at a time.

Here's a list of the ones that are "loose" (the numbers on the minis are based on how they're listed here, I numbered them to help me keep track of which I've read and which I haven't):
------------------------------
star getaway
star stars
mini 49 ultimate
mini 48 keldor
mini 44 buzz
mini 40 claws
mini 39 menace
mini 37 draw
mini 33 snake
mini 16 slave
mini 14 insect
mini 02 kograyskull

Thanks a lot - will check it out!

Edit: Upon further inspection, most of those indeed had incorrect naming and no directory in them. All fixed now.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 22:23 on December, 14th 2003

You might also want to take a look at the dc and uk ones. The ones I have don't have directories, but I'm pretty sure I took them out of the directories after I unzipped them. (I was planning to flatten them all at one point, but only did a few before I decided it was more hassle than it was worth.)
So, they should be ok, but you might want to check to be sure.