How are PDFs made?
An application generally makes a PDF file in a fashion directly analogous to printing that document on a postscript printer. The output from the application goes first to a postscript printer driver which takes the output and turns it into printable postscript. That postscript instructions for printing the document are then passed to the PDF creation software where it is packaged in the rest of the stuff that makes it a PDF. Many packages make this look like a single process since you only see the application send out the data and then see the PDF appear somewhere on your computer’s file system. However, this appearance is deceptive. PDF creation is virtually never a single process. Indeed, most PDF creationware packages utilize a conventional postscript printer driver as the first stage of the two-part process.
