This article makes a ton of good points, but misses typesetting. A lot of the books he cites got typeset with troff. Certainly all of Kernighan's books, and a

This article makes a ton of good points, but misses typesetting. A lot of the books he cites got typeset with troff. Certainly all of Kernighan's books, and all of Stevn's books, got typeset using troff. It's not that troff is so great at user input (it's not, it's frighteningly difficult) but that the output is so good. I know that Stevens tweaked the troff to get good output, too. No orphans, widows or rivers for him. Books typeset using "Word" are typically, though not always, not good books. Word's output is usually a little goofy. Word also seems to tempt people into doing stupid things, too. Maybe Word is too easy, and authors end up writing too much, but something causes Word-set books to be a bit worse in general than other typesetting-method-books.