For your serious imposition needs, perhaps PDFtk could do the trick? Also, some higher-end printers support imposition, as I'm sure acrobat does (should you have access to it, or acrobat.com). The context wiki points to PDFjam for doing complicated impostion: http://freshmeat.net/projects/pdfjam/ or context supports a bunch of stuff out of the box: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Imposition such as:
ConTeXt has some built-in imposition schemas (see "arranging pages" in the manual):
2UP : 2 pages next to each other, n sheets arranged for a single booklet
2DOWN : 2 pages above each other, n sheets arranged for a single booklet
2SIDE : 2 pages per form, side by side in pagination order, single sided only (no real imposition, only paper saving)
2TOP : 2 pages above each other, single sided only
2TOPSIDE: 2 odd pages on one side, two even pages verso, above each other
2*2 : section: one sheet 2 x 2 pages = 4 pages (2 pages per form, for single sheets with front and back)
2**2 : section: one sheet 2 x 2 pages = 4 pages (2 pages per form, for book ordering)
2*4 : section: one sheet 2 x 4 pages = 8 pages (4 pages per form, 2x2 pages head to head)
2*8 : section: one sheet 2 x 8 pages = 16 pages
2*16 : section: one sheet 2 x 16 pages = 32 pages
2*4*2 : section of 16 pages: 2 sheets, 4 pages front and backside
2*2*4 : section of 16 pages: 4 sheets, 2 pages front and backside
XY : one sheet with x rows and y columns, you can control the number with \setuppaper[nx=...,ny=...,dx=...,dy=...]
For LaTeX, consider using the memoir package. The memoir manual is a great document, and explains a lot of page layout (and is good even if you are not using tex). It has a dedicated environment for poems. I have some code at home that I can post here later. The only problem I've had with LaTeX is getting PDF/X compliance for print on demand stuff. The manual has other good examples.
An example with memoir :
\documentclass[a5paper,10pt,twoside]{memoir}
\renewcommand{\PoemTitlefont}{%
\normalfont\scshape\flushleft% Remove centering from poem title
\hspace*{0.5\linewidth}\hspace*{-0.5\versewidth}}% Makes poem title flush left with body block.
\setlength{\afterPoemTitleskip}{0.7\onelineskip}% Changes the vertical space between the poem title and poem body
\title{A Collection of Fancy Poems}
\author{Some Guy}
\date{}
\checkandfixthelayout
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}
\newpage
\tableofcontents*
\thispagestyle{empty}
\newpage
\settowidth{\versewidth}{The longest line of your poem}
\PlainPoemTitle
\PoemTitle{Grass}
\begin{verse}[\versewidth]
first line
second line
third line fourth line
The longest line of your poem
and more and more and more
and more
grass
\end{verse}
\newpage
\end{document}
For ConTeXt, set an environment and use the [spaces=yes] option. ConTeXt easily provides the PDF/X compliance, as well as doing imposition (http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Imposition).
An example with ConTeXt
% PDF-X is this easy...
\setupinteraction
[title=Some Title,
subtitle=A Collection of Poems,
author=Some guy,
keyword=[{poetry, los angeles}]
\definehead[PoemTitle][section]
\setuphead[PoemTitle][number=no, page=yes]
\definelines[typing]
\setuplines[typing][space=yes]
\setupbackend[export=yes]
\starttext
\PoemTitle{A Great Poem Title}
\starttyping
My Poem Looks Like this
and it's kind of silly when
you
have to read it
\stoptyping
\stoptext
I found an entry in the official MikTeX Bug list (via source forge), originally from Ulrike Fischer. So people should click on Ulrike's comment to give her her due.
Miktex 2.9, win xp, installed as single user.
In miktex-settings in the language tab there are no "New, edit, remove" buttons. I see only the list of languages.
Later in the discussion forum for MiKTeX user “Tethered.Sun” wrote:
I managed to find a workaround: I located the language.dat file, rewritten the
relevant row in it, and ran initexmf --dump. Updating the format files from
the graphical interface would do no good since it always replaced my manual
insertions with the default (and ineditable) settings of the graphical
interface.
Using the command line program initexmf does the job of adding the desired hyphenation patterns. As of this writing, the bug reported above remains outstanding.
So I'll use the command line tools in place of the gui.
Best Answer
There seems to be no Type1 font for use with pdftex. But with LuaTeX or XeTeX you can try out the TrueType font “Proofreader”, that provides proofmarks used in German Language. It can be downloaded in a ZIP file from http://www.maxfonts.com/fonts/p/proofreader.font (the link to the original vendor is dead) and used for free (the license is CC BY-ND 3.0). As you are a German, you can read the included PDF file. (For all: The mapping is shown in this file. It should be also recognizable, if you don’t understand German, search for “Tastenbelegung”.) In my humble opinion the “deleatur” sign is ugly, the “kursiv“ line is angular instead of wavy.
I think it would be the best to create a new fontfamily (means: use
fontspec) and an own speaking command for every proofmark, because the mapping to the letters looks like it was done at random.A very different and perhaps much better approach may be to draw all proofmarks with TikZ or something similar and assign them to own (speaking) commands.
Update: Though they are not TeX related, I want to add some links: PDF Editing – Making the Most of the Stamps Tool and Free Stamp Collections for PDF-XChange Viewer. At least the marks dedicated for PDF-XChange Viewer are embedded in PDF files and could therefore used in other ways.