I need to make PDF files of all sorts of things other than Libre Office documents. For this I use the cups-pdf package. I can also use the print-to-file feature and select a PDF output file. I wonder if anyone can offer detailed comparison.

While I use PDF files, I don't know the jots and tittles of what is involved. Therefore other than a binary diff, I cannot evaluate the differences between the two resulting files. I know this much: NEITHER OUTPUT offers much in the way of configuration options, end-user interactions, and output flexibility. (I hope I'm simply missing some details that others can point out.)

Since cups-pdf is an APT package, while print-to-file seems built-in with cups itself, I wonder why both are available. Further I wonder if print-to-file is good enough that no longer need the separate package.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

In essence, a PDF file is an encapsulated post script file. All the configuration of the document is done by the program that prepared the original post script. So there is no need for configuration options to cups-pdf.
Where cups-pdf is very useful is in a networked environment. I have a virtual pdf printer queue served by CUPS using cups-pdf. This print queue is used by users of Windows machines as well as Linux machines. In our situation it is useful to have the PDF files created at a central location, rather than being spread across individual machines by using print to file.

You made me curious, so I printed this page with "print to file" and with the PDF backend, and this is what I found: they look exactly the same, but the "print to file" PDF is much smaller (91KB vs 228KB) and its header says it's a "PDF-1.5" vs the "PDF-1.3" of the PDF backend.
This is with the default setting on debian squeeze, but you can configure some parameters in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf .
It's interesting to see that the config file says that the PDF version should be 1.4 by default...

And you didn't get either version -- v1.3 vs. v1.5 -- what a hoot.

----------------------------

If a PDF file is actually an encapsulated postscript file, then what are files that
have the extension EPS and how are they different. Why do both exist? Did EPS
happen before PDF existed or became defacto standard? I believe that ghostscript
and ghostview both continue to talk about EPS files.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Sorry for the confusion. That was my loose terminology, (also seen here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format). An EPS file has a particular definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encapsulated_PostScript. I was trying to convey the idea that the postscript in a PDF file is part of a larger container.