A beautiful border style

Question

I need a border style that has a nice appearance. I've found something like this:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text
\begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}
    \centering
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
    \draw [line width=1mm,decorate%,decoration={snake
        %,segment length=<length>,amplitude=<length>
%        }
        ]
        ($ (current page.north west) + (0.3cm,-0.3cm) $)
        rectangle
        ($ (current page.south east) + (-0.3cm,0.3cm) $);
\end{tikzpicture}
    \huge Ejemplo de margenes

\end{titlepage}
\end{document}

But it looks neither beautiful nor formal. Perhaps something like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancybox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/fancybox
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/fancybox
\begin{document}

\thisfancyput(3.25in,-4.5in){%
  \setlength{\unitlength}{1in}\fancyoval(7,9.5)}%
\lipsum[1-20]

\end{document}

But I don't know how to set the margin to the complete document.

Answer 1

You could use the background package to add your frame to all (or to some of) the pages of your document; a simple example producing a rounded double frame:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{background}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\SetBgScale{1}
\SetBgAngle{0}
\SetBgColor{black}
\SetBgContents{
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
    \draw [line width=1pt,rounded corners=15pt,double]
        ($ (current page.north west) + (2.5cm,-2.5cm) $)
        rectangle
        ($ (current page.south east) + (-2.5cm,2.5cm) $);
\end{tikzpicture}
}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-40]
\end{document}

Answer 2

Gonzalo's answer as to how to get the round corners is fine. Just to add a few comments on the typography.

But it looks neither beautiful nor formal.

The reason is that any fancy decorations you put on pages detract from the text being in harmony with the white space of the margins. Books don't normally get printed with framed pages. It is only in some corporate environments that you find such distasteful typographical examples, which you should not emulate. Here are two images, one framed and another not framed.

Even after reducing the line thickness to 1pt, the framed option still does not look right. Please don't use it. The code I used (as per Gonzalo's full MWE) for the frame is:

\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
    \draw [line width=1pt,rounded corners=15pt]
        ($ (current page.north west) + (.5cm,-.5cm) $)
        rectangle
        ($ (current page.south east) + (-.5cm,.5cm) $);
\end{tikzpicture}

Margins are normally set with the geometry package. I set them in the example as:

\documentclass{octavo}
\usepackage[left=1cm]{geometry}

Answer 3

Do you think that this PDF is what you want? Its source can be downloaded from Here.

The typesetted material is a Persian poem from Shahnameh.

This is typeset using xepersian package in xelatex.