Ted Harding:
However, after 'ps2pdf' this PS file converts to a PDF file of size 40667 bytes -- actually smaller than the original! (of course, there is compression involved here; if I turn off compression I end up with 207810
I notice that ps.gz is missing from your figures?
Anyway, PDF is a good idea poorly executed, I think. By introducing multiple incompatible versions of the format and making implementers have to play "chase the document trail" if they want to do a full version, they've pretty much guaranteed it's always going to cause pain. (The document trail comment is based on commend from the CL-PDF library authors, not personal experience.)
Oh, remember that xpdf (or even pdf2ps and ps2ascii in some cases) recovers you the original text for editing. In many cases, xhtml is a better format for document interchange.