>I am interested in knowing if the algorithms for typesetting would be nearly indentical (at least, for my purposes.)

why not buying an old indesign version {2.0] cheap?

InDesign is a more complete solution if you are going to hire a commercial printer to publish your documents.

Pages supports most of the things you might want to do in a page layout program, but it is missing certain things. For instance, I don't think it supports bleeds. You could work around this by using a larger page size and setting up your "real" page inside that, complete with crop marks and bleeds, but it would mean extra work.

Pages supports many of the typographic controls that InDesign does, but it's less robust and some things are somewhat hidden. For instance, to use OpenType features, you have to choose Format > Font > Show Fonts... and then choose Typography... from the tiny pop-up menu with the gear on it in the lower part of the Font panel.

InDesign has complete "pre-flighting" features, can work with spot colors, has more sophisticated typographic controls, etc., etc. It's designed for professionals working with commercial printers and can handle practically anything you can think of. Pages can do a lot, but it's definitely more limited. That's not to say it wouldn't work for you, it just depends on what you need to do.

Finally, if you do use Pages, I would recommend exporting to PDF and send the PDF to the printer. I very much doubt that a commercial printer or service bureau will accept Pages documents.

If all that you're printing at short poems Pages will do nicely.

In comparing Pages to InDesign, I am interested in knowing if the algorithms for typesetting would be nearly indentical (at least, for my purposes.) For example, is tracking in either program equally sophisticated?

AFAIK, Pages doesn't have any equivalent to InDesign's paragraph composer, so the algorithms for typesetting differ greatly in terms of line break choices.

Cheers,

T