"Native" PDF workflow through CUPS (save to disk) on OS X

[Ben BW]

I came across something that suggested that CUPS will gradually phase in PDF as the working file format, as more printers are able to interpret PDF directly, and as PostScript becomes obsolete... <sniff>.

So I was trying to work out how to implement a print queue that used PDF natively, rather than converting to PostScript. Does anyone know of a PPD for any printer that can interpret PDF?? I would be interested in having a look.

>From what I can gather, it may be a simple as including the following lines in the PPD:

*cupsFilter "application/vnd.cups-pdf 0 cgpdftopdf"
*cupsFilter "application/vnd.cups-postscript 100 cgpdftops"

Though I did try this, but it didn't work until I manually changed the printers.config file to include this:

Filter application/vnd.cups-pdf 0 -

instead of the the same line but with "postscript" in the place of "pdf".

Anyway, the purpose of all this is to create a PDF print to disk queue on OS X. "Why not use CUPS-PDF?, I hear you cry.
Well, CUPS-PDF converts to PostScript and then back into PDF, which is slow and potentially prone to complications. I would rather have CUPS/OS X just run out PDF directly.

I already have my own backend for saving PS to disk, so all that needs is modifying to add ".pdf" to the output, rather than ".ps", and it all seems to work.

I just wondered if anyone here had any comments about PDF workflow through CUPS, and if anyone has an example PPD for a PDF-native device.