I don't know what they're saying, and I can't help but feel that I'm being scolded for doing something wrong, but I can think of worse ways to be scolded.

-mouser (January 12, 2021, 10:57 AM)

That's Ievan Polkka.  It's gotten to be an internet thing since about 2006 or so.  Nope, they aren't scolding (well, maybe); check out the lyrics (farther down the page in the second link)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ievan_polkka
https://www.lyricsmania.com/ievan_polkka_lyrics_loituma.html

Back in the day, Pagemaker was my jam, and is in fact the very software that kicked off the Desktop Publishing revolution of the '90s.  I thought that since you were still considering Broderbund that it might do exactly what you need, but the latest that I could find is that it won't install on any Windows past XP.  It might be a nice exercise for your inner hacker to see if it can be done.  I don't know if Adobe will still sell you a license though...

Scribus is actually very nice once you get used to its workflow of separating content from layout, which is how it used to be done in the old pasteup-and-rubylith days.  My only gripe about it is it can't do Publisher-style automatic repeating layouts like for business cards.  It can be done, it's just more manual then I'd like for that functionality.

That said, and I hate to admit it being a Linux user, but for ease of use doing simple layouts, Publisher is a very nice and straightforward solution if you're willing to put up the money.  OpenOffice doesn't really have an equivalent, and Scribus is the closest I've found in the free options.