JT and HT need to take flyers to a couple of upcoming meetings, so after some back-and-forth about what they should contain and look like, we settled on a 3-column folded flyer printed on two sides of letter-size paper; this will allow us to produce the flyers in-house using the ETCL printer.

Since I don't have Illustrator on Linux, I decided this would be a good opportunity to learn the open-source DTP package Scribus, so I installed it, along with a package of additional templates from its website. I found it was easier to start from scratch than it was to use any of the templates available. Setup is all pretty straightforward, and these are some key points I discovered:

• Scribus will import SVG directly, so you can bring an Inkscape graphic right into the application, and it remains a vector (or, better, a collection of vectors; it seems to maintain their separateness). However, for simplicity, I found I got better results if I created a graphic carefully, at precise size, in Inkscape, then exported it as a high-resolution PNG, then brought that into Scribus in an image box.
• To flow text between text boxes, you have to click on the first box, then click on the correct toolbar button (I couldn't find any menu command for this), and then on the next text box (and presumably subsequent ones -- I only did two at a time). This works fine, but you have to find that toolbar button.
• Editing text inside Scribus is a bit of a sod. There is a "story editor" which allows you to edit the text, and inside that you can define and apply styles, but they're not displayed as you work, so you have to remember exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you italicize a block of text, it doesn't actually change; although the font combo readout will change to show the italicized font for the whole paragraph, even if you only selected part of the paragraph. In short, it's not wise to try and style/edit your text inside Scribus; do it in Open Office Writer, then save as ODT and import.
• Export to PDF works great, and is the best way to print; I printed from Adobe Reader and got good results.