From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: doug@cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2017 07:37:16 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] It is time to modernise "groff"
Message-ID: <201709051137.v85BbGTU005695@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>

> > p) Remove the '-a' option (the ASCII approximation output).
> 
> I didn't even know this existed.  Looking at what it spits out, I find
> myself wondering what good it is.  Is this for Unix troff compatibility?
> For people who didn't even have glass TTYs and needed to imagine what
> the typeset output would look like?

Here's a classic use:

Since groff is not WYSIWYG, the experimental cycle is long:
edit - save - groff - view. In many cases that cycle can be
short-circuited by typing straight into groff -a.

doug