🚀 go-pugleaf

I am attempting to build a ditroff output filter and a set of font
description files for an Epson LQ-850 24-pin dot matrix printer.
Things are going generally well and almost everything works, but I seem
to be stuck on one problem.  No matter how I mung around my widths,
index, funny_names, etc. tables in my {DESC,R,I,B,S}.out files, I just
can't get \-, \| or \^ to generate any output at all.  What am I doing
wrong?  When I say

    echo "a\-b" | troff -Teps -a

it prints out "ab" ('troff' is ditroff on my machine, a Masscomp MC5500
running RTU 3.1a), but when I say

    echo "a\-b" | otroff -a

it prints "a-b" (otroff is the old C/A/T troff).

Can anybody help me?  By the way, I don't have /usr/bin/makedev or any
example font files, so I have had to do this all from the man pages.
-- 
Karl Fox, Morning Star Technologies, Inc.    ...!cbosgd!mstar!karl