> The .ul macro dates back to nroff which was aimed at impact printers and > where > underlining was (almost) the only option and the intention was to replace > manual typing. My first use of nroff was on daisy wheel printers; we were > grateful for .ul .
Yes, that is true. But when Joe Ossanna developed otroff he implemented it intentional using the italic font (or font set with .uf). He documented it (I have a documentation from 1976), so it is NOT a bug in this case. As mentioned underlining had been possible with otroff, but he decided against it (with a good explanatory statement). > "Backward Compatibility" is simply another way of saying "all bugs > are > preserved". > Define the difference between a Feature and a Bug. > 10 points This is similar to what D. Knuth says about future TeX. It makes sense, I like it. Why not simply choose a new name for that troff underline feature? It would be a good feature--I agree--and therefor it deserves a special name. > Oh, the memories ... I am pretty sure I once used a specialized teletype > that > actually supported 2 fonts, using the ShiftIn and ShiftOut ASCII > characters. > See ascii(7) . > > During that same era, Bell Labs had special groups of "mathematical > typists" > who used "mathematical typewriters". > > I once wrote a Fortran program that drove a pen-plotter to create pages of > mathematics very similar to those produced by Mathematics Typing, making it > easier to edit them over time. 5 punched cards produced 1 line of output. > I wonder if I still have a deck ;) It is nice to read such stories from the old days ...
