High time to revise the PhD thesis format

Before the electronic age: Henry Wellcome's dissertation from 1874

I don't know how it works in other countries, but in the UK, if you agree to examine a PhD thesis, odds are you will receive a bound document of some 250-400 pages to evaluate. You are not supposed to write on it. You may be explicitly forbidden to obtain an electronic version of the document.

There are ways of dealing with this: the most useful one, taught to me by Uta Frith when we co-examined a thesis some years ago, was to make ample use of post-it notes. However, this is still pretty tedious. What I want is a loose-leaf document that I can write on. I want, when travelling on a train to be able to take a chapter or two with me.

Please, can somebody fix this?