While studying for native postscript text I was hit by a revelation...
And so now we have *native PDF generation* (and there was much rejoicing).
Seriously on launchpad and even by private mail people kept asking for a way to export a PDF without using a distiller or a virtual printer... in fact it isn't actually difficult, since the PDF model is like postscript less the programming stuff (plus an object reference system).
Anyway I did this. It's a plotter class derived from PS_PLOTTER which can actually do the same things (excluded bitmap output, I didn't study that yet...). Derived as in class PDF_PLOTTER : public PS_PLOTTER to be clear.
Results seems to be good. I tested the result with xpdf and a newer poppler application.
Attached is a sample file for testing and comments (code not ready for release yet)