PDF search diagnosis: extraction and matching were proven correct
against the real 609-page library PDF (pdfjs 5.5.207, incl. the exact
range-transport setup makePDF uses — 841 hits for 'SELECT'), and the
served bundle had every piece. The failure was Alpine's reactivity:
this.book is a plain object, so reading .pdf through component state
returns a reactive Proxy around the PDFDocumentProxy — and pdf.js
v5 uses #private fields, so getPage() through the proxy throws
'cannot read private member', which the empty catch rendered as a
silent empty result set. runPdfSearch now unwraps via Alpine.raw
(falls back to the raw read), and search failures surface in the
drawer ('Search failed — see console') plus console.warn instead of
masquerading as 'No matches'.
Back-to-location stack (research/footnote workflow): the current
position is recorded before every programmatic jump — search-result
clicks, TOC entries, bookmark and highlight jumps — and on every
internal link click (footnotes, cross-references) via foliate's
'link' event. A ↩ button appears in the topbar once a return target
exists; Alt+← works everywhere. Ordinary paging never pollutes the
stack (max depth 50, consecutive duplicates collapse).
john-okeefe
1905feceea