  A graph drawn in a surface is a near-quadrangulation if the sum of the
lengths of the faces different from 4-faces is bounded by a fixed constant. We
leverage duality between colorings and flows to design an efficient algorithm
for 3-precoloring-extension in near-quadrangulations of orientable surfaces.
Furthermore, we use this duality to strengthen previously known sufficient
conditions for 3-colorability of triangle-free graphs drawn in orientable
surfaces.
