Thanks Russ. I have various editors that I use for php, html, etc although I mainly use a plain text editor for that stuff. PDFs are a simple byproduct/export from various apps.
MS-Publisher is a desktop publisher for creating 'publications' such as newsletters, handbooks, manuals, etc. The gold standard for such use is Adobe, but that went subscription some years ago (now known as 'Creative Cloud'). It's also an overkill for my needs. Scribus has been the open source solution touted as an alternative to Publisher for a number of years, but I somehow couldn't get along with it. I might take some time to revisit Scribus.
FWIW most of the stuff I do is for non-profits, and done for free. So open source with an occasional donation would help my pocket v expensive subscriptions such as Creative Cloud.