I have my own question on this same topic and a mystery related to it that might help both dynaryder and myself.
For a flatbar road bike build I bought the shimano SL-R770 10 speed road shifters and they are running on a complete sram rival group. That's right, a sram rival front and rear derailleur. I bought the super fancy matching FD-R770 that is supposedly required, but I never needed it because this bike shifts like butter on a bald monkey. So you're not supposed to be able to mix shimano shifters with sram derailleurs (or vice versa) because the cable ratios are different, but I did anyway and it works FANTASTICALLY! Can anybody explain that?
I mention this to you because you may consider trying the flat bar shifters with a normal front derailleur before sinking money into parts you may not need (which would be the FD-R773 for the road triple). I did the Paul thumbies thing originally and ended up thinking the road rapid fires were worth it.