Displaying page construction guides

Question

Is there any way to overlay some lines and dimensions on the document so that one can see where the margins end and more easily examine the overall layout and ratios of elements on the page?

See for example, some of the illustrations of frameworks in this article on the canons of page construction and this one on margins (which displays dimensions).

Answer 1

Just to add another useful package that does it:

\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}

(as many people load geometry anyways, it is a nice gadget)

Answer 2

Use \layout form the layout package. This produces:

and prints the layout details on the bottom:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{layout}
\begin{document}\layout
\end{document}

Answer 3

If you just want the boundaries overlaid on the actual pages, independently of other packages,

\usepackage{showframe}