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Most people assume UNIX typesetting was always just TeX - but troff and friends was probably more widespread at the time.

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The book I learned writing networking code from, Steven's "Unix Network Programming" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_Network_Programming) was typeset in troff. The first edition (1990) at least. The later ones aren't I think. Stevens passed away in 1999. I recall coming across many other books which mentioned "troff" in the introduction back then.

"The Unix Programming Environment" & "The C programming language" (K & R) were also written in troff.

Hard to believe it’s been that long since he passed. Was quite the blow.

I was pleasantly surprised to find he wrote a Forth primer for Kitt Peak observatory. Linked from this page: http://www.forth.org/tutorials.html

IIRC UNIX was supported by Bell Labs because of troff. They needed a type setting system.

Thought that was more how they convinced management to buy PDP11 saying we'll make typesetting software for patent department?

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