Thanks for your comments, everyone. I was a bit concerned that posting to a Scribus mailing list was asking for lots of "Scribus is the best thing since sliced bread" responses regardless of whether it could actually do the job, so the objectiveness of the responses has been very refreshing.
I think I shall be going with plain TeX, since that is what I know best and I am pretty sure that I can get out of any trouble I get myself into. But I will at least give Scribus a try for the cover, and spend some time playing with it fso that when it does become a contender I shall have had some experience with it. Thanks very much Doc Evans
