> the control chars still appeared in the file (at least on some Unix version) That's a good point. My whole reply is a bit GNU-centric: the "col -bx" soluti

> the control chars still appeared in the file (at least on some Unix version) That's a good point. My whole reply is a bit GNU-centric: the "col -bx" solution should work with everything except groff in ANSI mode (looks like the flag to go back to the standard troff behaviour is GROFF_NO_SGR [1][2], in case anybody is interested). [1] See: https://linux.die.net/man/1/grotty https://linux.die.net/man/1/grotty [2] SGR is "Select Graphics Rendition", apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#SGR_(Select_Graphic_Rendition)_parameters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#SGR_(Select_G...