> Have Ultrix rise again? > https://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/ancient/
Indeed! Didn't know this existed, but it's been an eye-opener. I ran the PDP-11 emulator with v7 Unix, and the included nroff (this appears to be pre-DIT n/troff, as troff just produced gibberish probably intended for a C/A/T) with this input: # cat test.ro .po 0 .ll 100p .de CC .. .di XX AAA\c AAA BBB BBB .CCC CCC DDD DDD DDD DDD DDD .br .di .XX AAA\c AAA BBB BBB .CCC CCC DDD DDD DDD DDD DDD produced the following output: # nroff test.ro AAAAAA BBB BBB DDD DDD DDD DDD AAAAAA BBB BBB .CCC CCC DDD DDD DDD DDD DDD So, to answer the original question: it appears to be a feature of Heirloom roff based on the behavior of AT&T roff. I really hadn't expected this.
