Recommended margin and binding offset

Question

I'm soon going to deliver my Thesis for printing. The printing office are not going to do anything to the margins before printing, nor binding offset. I showed them the default twopage LaTeX margins, and they told me that nothing would disappear, but it could be a little tight in the middle.

Do you have any suggestions or recommendations regarding margins and binding offset? Is the standard margins (without binding offset) usually working good? I'm using B5 size, and the number of pages will be in the range from 154-170.

I've read this question, plus some others, but I can't find any recommended settings there. I also found this question, where Bernard talks about a French formula. I guess this is more what I'm looking for, but I didn't really get it.

EDIT: The thesis is going to binded by gluing the papers to the spine. The papers have "normal" thickness. No spiral/helix.

EDIT II: If I want a binding offset of 6mm, how is this implemented in LaTeX using the geometry package?

Answer 1

I will explain the preamble you should use if you want to follow the French canon des ateliers for B5 paper.

The text width is a fraction of paperwidth – 3/4 for ordinary printing, 2/3 for neater printing and even 5/8 for luxury books. What remains is white space for horizontal margins. The inner margin is 4/10 of this white space, the outer margin is 6/10.

The top margin is 5/10 of the same white space, and the bottom margin is 7/10 (that makes 12/10 of the white space for horizontal margins), whence the proportion 4:5:6:7 turning clockwise around the page,starting from the inner margin.

Hence all you have to do for geometry is choosing textwidth, textheight and marginratio. As an illustration, here is a small file that uses these parameters for B5 paper and prints the numerical values for these keys in the three possibilities (ordinary, neat and luxury). I used the neat model, and didn't translate the French title:

\documentclass[b5paper,11pt, twoside]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[twoside,bindingoffset=6mm,verbose,marginratio={4:6,5:7},%
textwidth=117.3mm,height=179.6mm, nofoot, showframe]{geometry}%

\usepackage[sfdefault]{cabin}%
%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{numprint}
\nprounddigits{1}
\usepackage{setspace}
\setstretch{1.12}
\def\scale{0.8}
\def\.{\hspace{0.025ex}}
\parindent =0em\parskip = 0pt
\widowpenalty=10000 \clubpenalty=10000
\usepackage{microtype}
\SetTracking{encoding = *}{10}
\usepackage[dvipsnames, x11names]{xcolor}
\usepackage{titling}
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.5}
\newcommand*{\cell}[1]{\multicolumn{1}{@{}c@{}}{#1}}
\title{\color{Tomato2}\bfseries\LARGE Dimensions d’empagement\\ (canon des ateliers)}
\author{}
\date{\mbox{}\\}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{document}
\lsstyle
\setlength\droptitle{-55pt}
\maketitle
\vskip-1cm
\thispagestyle{empty}

\section*{Format B5 (176 $\times$ 250)}

TW = text width ; IM = inner margin; OM = outer margin. \\
TE = text height ; TM = top margin ; BM = bottom margin.\\
Margins ratio: 4 : 5 : 6 : 7\\

\begin{center}
  \begin{tabular}{@{}>{\bfseries}r@{\quad}|*{6}{N{3}{1}|}}
    \cell{Unit: mm} & \cell{TW} & \cell{IM} & \cell{OM} & \cell{TH} & \cell{TM} & \cell{BM}
    \\
    \cline{2-7}
    Ordinary & 132 & 17,605 & 26,44 & 197,20 & 22 & 30,80 \\
    Neat & 117,33 & 23,46 & 35,20 & 179,61 & 29,33 & 41,06 \\
    Luxury & 110 & 26,4 & 39,60 & 170,8 & 33 & 46,20 \\
    \cline{2 - 7}
  \end{tabular}
\end{center}

\end{document}

Just for fun, a small nonsense poem by Samuel Foote, typed with XeLaTeX and the commercial font Sabon Next LT Pro, with historic ligatures and the ‘canon des ateliers’ layout: