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
http://ctan.org/tex-archive/info/latex-samples/TitlePages This has
some great-looking examples, however, the dependencies are all very
complicated (i.e. knowing which packages to load in order to compile
an example requires familiarity with dozens of packages), and they are
also limited to 1 page.
I have taken (some of those examples) in the past and put them as individual examples. You can download these from Here, Here, Here, and Here. I have changed the examples little to work with xepersian package to typeset Persian documents.
Best Answer
Thanks for all your helpful comments. I'll try to compose an answer from them and the article that is now reachable again (thanks @diabonas for noting that).
The way I see this now, binding correction depends too much on the actual binding to make any good guess without having a similar book at hand as @doncherry noted. However, Markus Kohm, the author of the mentioned article, gives two basic estimations that can be done without knowing the specifics:
Markus Kohm lists two other methods that can be done if you happen to have a book in a similar format at hand. In contrast to the method I posted in the question, this doesn't have to have the same page layout. I actually didn't quite understand how the first one should work, but thought I should list a rough translation for those that cannot reach the file or don't speak German:
You need a book with the same paper format as the papers you want bind. Take a piece of paper that is twice this format and fold it down the middle. Fold it up and down until the fold is worn out a bit. Now open the book in the middle, firmly hold your page to the book and slam it shut without moving the page. The part of the page that sticks out of the book is your binding correction
For the other method you open the book in the center and put a ruler or piece of card board vertically in the center. Now push a piece of paper against the ruler and measure the part that sticks out over the pages of the book.