Any pager that uses termcap/terminfo and does so properly will enter/exit 'cursor addressing mode', which will normally end up switching to and from the XTerm alternate screen, which isn't what you want.
AFAIAA not even the #Illumos pg is as dumb as you want. That uses terminfo, too.
You'd have to resurrect something from 1977 or so.
Or see how far forcing TERM=dumb gets you.
Or port Microsoft's MORE command. (-:
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#more actually allowed going backwards from the days of 4.3BSD onwards, about 40 years ago.
On AT&T #Unix System 5, the pager was called pg, by the way. Not everyone made puns on the name of more. (-:
#Debian provides pun-free 'pager' as a generic name, too. And 'sensible-pager', just in case you thought that 'pager' was not sensible enough.
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