Greetings, Keith, Thomas, and all,
On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:43:59 -0600, Thomas A. Schmitz
if you look at the books of decent publishers, you will see that most of them still use ligatures (most American university presses, Oxford and Cambridge, German publishers such as Reclam etc.) However, many smaller publishers don't give a rat's ass about esthetics, and that's where Word comes into play: they have their authors deliver their manuscripts as Word files and simply typeset from that, more often than not by employing some underpaid and untrained "contractors" in India. Cuts costs and makes authors do all the work that publishers used to do in the olden days... Taking this as the norm is not a good idea.
The situation Thomas is describing is analogous to what happened 40 years ago: When metal-based typesetting started to die out, what came after was atrocious but ubiquitous. And that's _exactly_ why Knuth invented TeX! As a general rule: High-quality typesetting with good fonts and the ligatures off is like pouring fine wine into a plastic cup. Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523