As you were! I found a workaround.
1. merge all the separate scribus-generated .pdf files into one humongous (30 Mbyte) .pdf file using PDFSam basic (free)
2. open that large .pdf file in scribus (10+ minutes to load on a relatively new linux box with 16 G of RAM) Used Scribus 1.5.6 svn
3. once scribus loads, recreate all the links (one "return to index" link per page, 100+ pages, plus others) and save the resultant .sla file and also regenerate a new big .pdf (now over 63MBytes).
Works as expected. Now I need to find a way to reduce the size of the final .pdf. i'll check the
If there are any ideas on how to streamline this let me know. I also found a few sources for .pdf editing software that allows you to add links to the .pdf, but none that were linux-based.
bill