Converting From MS Publisher to Scribus

Recently I've decided to convert some of my MS Publisher files to Scribus, an open source desktop publishing software. I had to do a redesign of our menu so I thought I'd give Scribus a try. I think it's a good idea to start creating documents in open standards. I've already pretty much replace MS Word and Excel with Open Office Writer and Calc, and MS Publisher is the only other program I use extensively for designing flyers and menus. So I looked around and found this tutorial:

http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Import_Publisher_to_Scribus

It wasn't 100% smooth, but I did manage to get the text over. The formatting I had to basically redo, since I was doing a redsign anyways it wasn't such a big deal. So here are some thoughts on the switch after 2 weeks of using Scribus, cons first.

Cons:

• One of the major problems with Scribus I think is the way it handles images. I still haven't figured out how to scale images in Scribus. In MS Publisher it's just so easy to scale, crop, stretch, flip, rotate, and basically do whatever you want with the image or clip art. In Scribus, the image is put in an image frame, and it seems the image is independent of the frame, and no matter what you do with the frame, the image stays the same. This is probably the biggest problem I have with Scribus right now that I am considering sticking with MS Publisher until I figure out how to manipulate images in Scribus.
• Another issue is the "undo" function. Certain actions like moving a text box or un-type something you just can't undo. You basically have to manually move things or delete things. It's really annoying sometimes.
• The UI needs a little getting used to. For example, there is no style toolbar, so simple stuff like alignment, font size, and simple font effects like bold or underline require some menu digging.
• Limited clip art and border art selection. Even though using Google Image Search is another way to find clip art and frame borders, MS Publisher already come with a lot of basic ones for you to use right away.

Pros:

• It's open source and free. I know this is pretty redundant with all open source software, but it really is liberating using a free open source software as opposed to a pirated or even closed source "free" software.
• I don't know if it's deliberate, but I notice I am using "style editor" in the story editor a lot. It allows me to apply styles to different items like title, descriptions, etc. through out the document really fast. In Publisher, I'd always just manually edit the styles of each item one by one even though I know there's a style option, since the style toolbar is so easily accessible. But in Scribus, since there is no style toolbar, it's just faster and easier to create styles and apply them to items in the story editor. Thus for future modifications, all I have to do is modify the style and it will propagate through the whole document. Separating style from content is always a good idea.
• It had forced me to get familiar with the metric system. It was so weird seeing the rulers in millimeters, but I think it's better for future developments to use standards that are more widely accepted, such as an open source format and the metric system.
• Ability to create PDF documents. Can't do that in MS Publisher.

That's about it so far. MS Publisher is still a lot easier to use compared to Scribus. Even though I think the "ease of use" of Publisher might be making me lazier and possibly less creative in my designs, I still can't completely move away from MS Publisher just yet. If Scribus can fix the image and the undo issues then I am willing to give up the fancy clip arts, border arts, and text arts that MS Publisher offers and go Scribus full time. Until then, it's just like dual booting Windows and Linux, if it wasn't for the business and the money, I'd be living free and open source.