Thanks to all who have answered my questions. I was unclear
w.r.t. the backspace character: It isn't needed for positioning (this
is done internally in grotty before the output is emitted) but for
signalling that a character should be underlined or rendered bold.[1]
This isn't directly supported on the console but by pagers like
`less'.
groff never uses termcap or terminfo information for its TTY output,
and I don't plan to add this -- nobody has ever complained.
Looking into the source of jless, the Japanized version of less (which
apparently doesn't support Unicode), it seems that indeed two `\b's
are expected for overstriking and bold printing. Bruno has also shown
that two backspace characters give predictable results, so this is
what I will use.
Werner
[1] This is the old scheme. The new scheme uses SGR escape sequences.
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