Re: How Unix Spell Ran in 64kB RAM

Lawrence D'Oliveiro to Anton Shepelev:

Line-numbering would seem to be implementable as an
output-line trap using a counter in a numeric
register...

>
Testimony from those who were there
<https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html.node/Background.html>:
>
   When Unix was up and running on the PDP-11, Joe
   [Ossanna] got wind of the legal department having
   installed a commercial word processor. He went to
   pitch Unix as an alternative and clinched a trial by
   promising to make roff able to number lines by
   tomorrow in order to fulfill a patent-office
   requirement that the commercial system did not
   support.

From aught I know of *roff, my opinion is that Osanna
implenented line-numbering in a macro package, as I said,
rather than in the core utility itself.  And it is a great
compliment to *roff.

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