[Scribus] Correct tool for 500-page technical book

[D. R. Evans]

I am about to start work on a technical book that will be ~500 pages.

Last time I did this, I was forced to use Word. This is not an
experiance that I want to repeat. So I am trying to figure out what
would be the best tool to use this time. I am hoping that the final
product will simply need to be PDF, so that opens the possibility of
using any one of several tools. Scribus seems to be one of these
possible tools. It is also the only one with which I have zero
experience, so I don't know how to evaluate realistically how viable
it would be to use Scribus for this.

My biggest concern (apart from spending the time to use Scribus
properly, but I really don't mind doing that) is the index. I haven't
seen anything that indicates that Scribus knows how to create indices.
The TOC is also a bit of a concern, and I would like some input on
whether I should be worried about that. Although I haven't seen
anything about cross-references, I assume that Scribus must have some
way to handle headings and cross-references fairly auto-magically.

The other possible contenders apart from Scribus are:
  Word/OOo -- I really don't want to use these. My experience is that
OOo almost certainly isn't up to this kind of task. Word is, but it's
sooo painful.
  plain TeX -- probably the most likely, although tables and Figures
are a bit painful.
  LaTeX -- better than TeX for tables/Figures, but probably not
sufficiently flexible -- or, at least, not as easily customised as TeX

Anyway, would I be stupid not to try to use Scribus? Or stupid to try to use it?

  Doc Evans