AW-MAN

Awused's personal manga reader/image viewer.

It is a simple viewer with support for running arbitrary upscalers, like waifu2x.

Features

• Fast, GPU accelerated, and memory efficient reader.
  • The priorities are quality, then latency, then vram usage, then memory usage, then CPU usage.
  • Animated gifs are moderately memory-inefficient.
• Correct gamma and alpha handling during scaling and presentation.
• Wide support for many archive and image formats.
• Proper natural sorting of chapters even with decimal chapter numbers.
  • Works well with manga-syncer, but generally matches expected sorting order.
• Configurable shortcuts to run external scripts and a basic IPC interface.
• Support for custom external upscalers. See aw-upscale.
• Good support for manga layouts including side-by-side pages and long strips.
• Not much more, anything I don't personally use doesn't get implemented.

Usage

Run aw-man archive-of-images.zip or aw-man image.png and view the images. Also works non-recursively on directories of images. Push U to switch to viewing an upscaled version of the images. Dragging and dropping files works too.

Manga mode (--manga, -m or the M shortcut) causes it to treat the directory containing the archive as it if contains a series of volumes or chapters of manga. The next chapter or volume should follow after the last page of the current archive. Supports the directory structure produced by manga-syncer but should work with any archives that sort sensibly.

See aw-man -h for more usage information.

It's Recommended to copy aw-man.toml.sample to ~/.config/aw-man/aw-man.toml or ~/.aw-man.toml and fill it out according to the instructions in the file.

Installation

JEMALLOC_SYS_WITH_MALLOC_CONF="background_thread:true,oversize_threshold:0" cargo install --git https://github.com/awused/aw-man --locked

JEMALLOC_SYS_WITH_MALLOC_CONF is used to tweak jemalloc for greater performance with large allocations. This doesn't apply on Windows. It should be automatically set but better to set it explicitly.

If you have trouble getting upscaling to work, make sure that waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan is on your PATH. The directory containing the waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan binary should also contain the models-cunet directory.

Additional optional files for installation can be found in the desktop directory.

Dependencies

Default:

• GTK - GTK4 libraries and development headers must be installed.
  • Pixbuf is used as a fallback to support a wider variety of formats.
• libarchive - Used to extract images from archive files.
• libjxl
• opencl
  • This can optionally be disabled with --default-features false
• opengl
• libepoxy
  • Should already be present on most Linux and Windows systems, but may need to be installed on Mac.

On Fedora all default dependencies can be installed with dnf install gtk4-devel libarchive-devel jpegxl-devel ocl-icd-devel.

Optional:

• unrar - Support reading from rar files that aren't supported by libarchive is provided by using the unrar binary.
  • unrar is disabled by default and must be enabled in the config.
• Additional Pixbuf loader plugins.
  • These can add support for less common formats, like avif and heif.

Upscaling has additional default requirements, but can be configured to use others:

• waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan When installing waifu2x, make sure that the models directory is present (copied or symlinked) in the same directory as the executable.
• PyGObject is also preferred by the default upscaler.
  • ImageMagick 6 or 7 will be used as a fallback if PyGobject is not available.

Alternative upscalers can be configured in place of waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan, see aw-upscale.

Shortcuts

Default Shortcut	Action
?	List current keybinds.
Down Arrow/Mouse Wheel Down	Scrolls down, possibly to the next page.
Up Arrow/Mouse Wheel Up	Scrolls up, possibly to the previous page.
Right Arrow/Left Arrow	Scrolls right or left. Cannot change the current page except in horizontal strip mode.
Shift+Arrow Keys	Snaps to the top, bottom, left, or right side of the current page.
Page Down	Moves to the next page.
Page Up	Moves to the previous page.
Ctrl+Page Down/Page Up	Move to the next or previous page without changing the scroll position.
Home/End	Moves to the First/Last page in the current archive.
]	Moves to the next archive in the same directory.
[	Moves to the previous archive in the same direcotry.
H	Hide the UI.
B	Pick a background colour.
F	Toggle fullscreen mode.
U	Toggle upscaling.
M	Toggle manga mode, enabling continuous scrolling through chapters in the same directory.
Space	Pause or play the current animation or video.
J	Jump to a specific page, either in absolute or relative (+/-) terms.
Q/Esc	Quit.
Alt+F	Display images at their full size, scrolling if necessary.
Alt+W	Fit images to the width of the window, scrolling vertically if necessary.
Alt+H	Fit images to the height of the window, scrolling horizontally if necessary.
Alt+C	Fit images inside the window. Images will not need to scroll.
Alt+S	Single page display mode.
Alt+V	Vertical strip display mode. Display multiple images at once to fill the screen vertically.
Alt+O	Horizontal strip display mode. Display multiple images at once to fill the screen horizontally.
Alt+D	Dual page mode. Display two pages side-by-side.
Alt+R	Reversed dual page mode. Display two pages side-by-side, with the first to the right of the second.
Ctrl+O	Open new files. For both standalone pages and compressed archives.
Ctrl+Shift+O	Open a new directory.

Customization

Keyboard shortcuts and context menu entries can be customized in aw-man.toml. See the comments in the config file for how to specify them.

Recognized internal commands:

• Help
  • List current keybinds.
• NextPage/PreviousPage/FirstPage/LastPage
  • Optionally takes an argument of start, end, or current to determine what portion of the page will be visible.
• ScrollDown/ScrollUp
  • These may switch to the next or previous page outside of strip mode.
  • Optionally takes a scroll amount as a positive integer ScrollDown 500
• ScrollRight/ScrollLeft
  • Optionally takes a scroll amount as a positive integer ScrollRight 500
• SnapTop/SnapBottom/SnapLeft/SnapRight
  • Snaps the screen so that the edges of the current page are visible.
• FitToContainer/FitToWidth/FitToHeight/FullSize
• SinglePage/VerticalStrip/HorizontalStrip/DualPage/DualPageReversed
  • Change how pages are displayed.
• NextArchive/PreviousArchive
• Quit
• SetBackground
  • Spawns a dialog allowing the user to select a new background colour.
  • Optionally takes a string recognized by GDK as a colour.
  • Examples: SetBackground #aaaaaa55 SetBackground magenta
• Fullscreen/MangaMode/Upscaling/Playing/UI
  • Toggle the status of various modes.
    • Fullscreen - If the application is full screen.
    • MangaMode - If scrolling down from the last image in an archive will automaticlly load the next archive.
    • Upscaling - Whether or not external upscalers are in use.
    • Playing - Set whether animations and videos are playing.
    • UI - Hide or show the visible portions of the UI.
  • These optionally take an argument of toggle, on or off
  • Examples: Fullscreen (equivalent to Fullscreen toggle), MangaMode on, or Playing off
  • ToggleFullscreen/ToggleMangaMode/ToggleUpscaling/TogglePlaying/ToggleUI are older, deprecated versions that do not take arguments.
• Jump
  • Spawns a dialog allowing the user to enter the number of the page they want to display, or the number of pages to shift.
  • Optionally takes an integer argument as either an absolute jump within the same chapter or a relative jump, which can span multiple chapters in Manga mode.
  • Optionally takes a second argument of start, end, or current to determine what portion of the page will be visible.
  • Absolute jumps are one-indexed.
  • Examples: Jump 25, Jump +10, Jump -5, Jump -4 start, Jump +1 current
• Execute
  • Requires a single string argument which will be run as an executable.
  • Example: Execute /path/to/save-page.sh
• Script
  • Like Execute but reads stdout from the executable as a series of commands to run, one per line.
  • Waits for the script to finish. Will be killed on program exit.
    • Use Execute and the unix socket for more interactive scripting.
  • Example: Script /path/to/sample-script.sh
• Open/OpenFolder
  • Spawns a dialog allowing the user to open new files or a new folder.
  • Open can take a series of unescaped but quoted paths.
  • Example Open /first/path/file.jpg /second/path/file2.jpg "/path/with spaces/file3.jpg"

External Executables

Using the "Execute" action you can run any arbitrary executable. That executable will be called with no arguments and several environment variables set. save-page.sh is an example that implements the common save page as file action. Long-lived processes should prefer using the Status command for current values.

Environment Variable	Explanation
AWMAN_ANIMATION_PLAYING	Whether or not animations and videos are currently playing.
AWMAN_ARCHIVE	The path to the current archive or directory that is open.
AWMAN_ARCHIVE_TYPE	The type of the archive, one of archive, directory, fileset, or unknown.
AWMAN_BACKGROUND	The current background colour in rgb(int, int, int) or rgba(int, int, int, float) form.
AWMAN_CURRENT_FILE	The path to the extracted file or, in the case of directories, the original file. It should not be modified or deleted.
AWMAN_DISPLAY_MODE	The current display mode, either single or verticalstrip.
AWMAN_FIT_MODE	The current fit mode, one of container, height, width, or verticalstrip.
AWMAN_FULLSCREEN	Wether or not the window is currently fullscreen.
AWMAN_MANGA_MODE	Whether manga mode is enabled or not.
AWMAN_PAGE_NUMBER	The page number of the currently open file.
AWMAN_PID	The PID of the aw-man process.
AWMAN_RELATIVE_FILE_PATH	The path of the current file relative to the root of the archive or directory.
AWMAN_SOCKET	The socket used for IPC, if enabled.
AWMAN_UI_VISIBLE	Whether the UI (bottom bar) is currently visible.
AWMAN_UPSCALING_ENABLED	Whether upscaling is enabled or not.
AWMAN_WINDOW	The window ID for the primary window. Currently only on X11.

External Scripting

If configured, aw-man will expose a limited API over a unix socket, one per process. See the documentation in aw-man.toml and the example script.

Request	Response
Status	The same set of environment variables sent to shortcut executables.
ListPages	List the pages in the current archive.

The API also accepts any valid action that you could specify in a shortcut, including external executables. Don't run this as root.

Building on Windows

This isn't really recommended. GTK support for Windows is pretty sub-par.

Assumes vcpkg and a Rust toolchain are already installed and VCPKG_ROOT is properly set. Install dependencies with vcpkg install libarchive:x64-windows gtk:x64-windows libjxl:x64-windows libarchive:x64-windows-static-md

Add %VCPKG_ROOT%\installed\x64-windows\bin to your PATH, without this you'll need to copy the DLLs produced elsewhere yourself.

For build make sure %VCPKG_ROOT%\installed\x64-windows\lib\pkgconfig is added to PKG_CONFIG_PATH and %VCPKG_ROOT%\downloads\tools\msys2\9a1ec3f33446b195\mingw32\bin is added to PATH. The string 9a1ec3f33446b195 may be out of date and might need to be updated to whatever is produced.

cmd.exe:

set PKG_CONFIG_PATH=%VCPKG_ROOT%\installed\x64-windows\lib\pkgconfig;%PKG_CONFIG_PATH%
set PATH=%VCPKG_ROOT%\downloads\tools\msys2\9a1ec3f33446b195\mingw32\bin;%PATH%
cargo install --git https://github.com/awused/aw-man --locked

powershell:

$Env:Path += ";$Env:VCPKG_ROOT\downloads\tools\msys2\9a1ec3f33446b195\mingw32\bin"
$Env:PKG_CONFIG_PATH += ";$Env:VCPKG_ROOT\installed\x64-windows\lib\pkgconfig"
cargo install --git https://github.com/awused/aw-man --locked

Add --features windows-console to get console I/O, though this will spawn a console window when it's opened.

Assuming the cargo install path is already in your PATH then aw-man some_file should work. You can use the GTK_THEME environment variable to configure the theme, Adwaita-dark will switch to the bundled dark theme. Associate file types manually and use OpenWithCompressed.ps1 to set up context menu entries for common archive formats.

I've also run into issues with Nvidia, gsync/freesync, and low idle clocks. If scrolling performance is choppy changing power settings to "prefer maximum performance" though this is unlikely to be a problem for normal use.

Why

I wrote manga-upscaler for use with mangadex's web viewer but now have a need for something more controllable. Most of the complexity of an image viewer or comic book reader comes from all the customization offered and aw-man has little of that. This program is very much written to fit my needs and little more, which is roughly an mcomix-like image viewer that is much faster.

There is also a perfectly functional version in the cpu branch that does not depend on opengl.