On 7/16/26 12:35, Joshua O'Keefe wrote:
On Jul 16, 2026, at 8:56 AM, B 9 <[email protected]> wrote:
I’ve created amuch smaller version of the PDF <https://
gist.github.com/hackerb9/4b993d3e204a0eb0e46859a276b22fee/
raw/59f26ba22962e78005fee4ee18fec42bdab570e0/
TRS-80_Model_100_Portable_Computer-jbig2.pdf>(40 MB instead of 2 GB)
by using JBIG2 symbol compression.
Within the limits of what jbig2 can do, this is a delightful tradeoff of
readability for size. Great work! As a daily driver version of the
manual it seems far more than adequate given that it's about the size of
a baby's pinky nail.
I'd love to see all the variants people are working on consolidated into
a single collection once the dust settles. No doubt those who come after
us would benefit from scrounging all over the internet hunting down
which copy is which, or losing track of the reference scan. We already
run into this problem today with slightly divergent copies of the same
document becoming "welp, that's all we've got."
Thanks for offering this up!
Ideally just include a link to a reference version inside an optimized
version. And hyperlinked index and maybe ocr layer for search.
Someone made a web version of just the BASIC refernce that is incomplete
and even has a few errors, yet is SOOOO handy just by virtue of having a
hyperlinked index that it's worth using anyway.
https://help.ayra.ch/trs80-reference
That's the closest I've found to something like the great web references
for most other languages that came later.
It seems like it should be pretty straightforward, just tedious, to
write that in self-contained markdown or even just largely the same html
just without the js, or at least with less js and not in external files.
But a pdf with that interactivity in it would be nice because you could
still print it like a plain pdf to reproduce the original, or view on an
e-reader etc.
I also have pretty good looking copies of the tech reference and service
manual, but those have glued bindings so they will require setting up my
actual book scanner. Also it has a large bed which will be better for
the schematics.
Since the owners manual is spiral bound it was easiy to just do it on my
regular printers flatbed scanner.
I also found another copy of the owners manual with a different type of
wire binding and rectangular holes. They both say the same 1983 on page
ii and both have the same 2A3 mark on the back cover. At a quick glance
the contents look the same but I have no idea if there might actually be
different editions with corrections.
I just really want, (and was planning on working on sooner or later), a
nice clickable/searchable BASIC reference like that web one except just
a little more complete and correct than that one. And it would be neat
if it displayed the actual original manual instead of a re-creation of
unknown correctness. Or if a re-creation, then a wiki-based one that can
have all it's gaps and errors ironed out by whoever knows better.
--
bkw
