On 3/2/24, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Often in *roff typesetting, things like tables of contents come at the > end of the document because it is only then that enough information is > known to format them correctly. This can be true of cover sheets too if > some reason they require information that is not known at the "start" of > the document. *roff is a single-pass formatter. However, with scripts, > make(1) files, or tools like mmroff(1), this limitation can be overcome.
To put this design decision in historical context: when troff was developed, its expected output format was ink on paper. So moving pages from the back to the front didn't require external tools beyond eyes and hands (which the user was expected to have anyway in order to retrieve the output from the printer).
