Thanks for the encouragement!

I’ve learned how to add a PDF document outline and created an updated file
with an index on the sidebar
<https://gist.github.com/hackerb9/4b993d3e204a0eb0e46859a276b22fee/raw/TRS-80_Model_100_Portable_Computer-jbig2.pdf>
.

It took a while to type in the outline and page numbers by hand,
particularly since I added an entry for every BASIC command. I figured if I
do it right, no one will have to go through this tedium again. The outline
is structured as a text file (outline.txt
<https://gist.github.com/hackerb9/4b993d3e204a0eb0e46859a276b22fee/raw/w-outline.txt>)
which can be added to the PDF by using cpdf -add-bookmarks outline.txt
in.pdf -o out.pdf. (I don’t know why cpdf <https://www.coherentpdf.com/>
calls the outline “bookmarks”.)

I still haven’t gotten hyperlinks for the actual text figured out, but I
noticed cpdf can create a clickable Table of Contents from the outline and
add it to the beginning of the document. I think it looks a bit ugly and
may not be so useful since the outline shows on the sidebar anyhow,
but see this
version with a generated TOC
<https://gist.github.com/hackerb9/4b993d3e204a0eb0e46859a276b22fee/raw/TRS-80_Model_100_Portable_Computer-jbig2+toc.pdf>
for yourself and let me know if it's useful or not.

—b9

On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 9:41 AM Joshua O'Keefe <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On Jul 16, 2026, at 8:56 AM, B 9 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I’ve created a much 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!
>

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