I did try the 1.5.x branch and the 1.6 RC1 with the new iText library. In both cases I got the same results. I should take a closer look at the pdf producing part of geoserver during xmas holidays.
Stefan - waiting for rc2 
-----UrsprĂĽngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Andrea Aime [mailto:aaime@anonymised.com]
Gesendet am: Freitag, 14. Dezember 2007 21:50
An: Ziegler Stefan
Cc: geoserver-users
Betreff: Re: [Geoserver-users] pdf output
Ziegler Stefan ha scritto:
Hi
we want to use geoserver’s ability of producing pdf outputs for “high
quality web printing” (something like this:
http://www.john-longo.org/b1.pdf ). My problem is, that I get sometimes
quite small pdf-files (around 300 kb) but also “too” big ones (above 1
mb: http://www.john-longo.org/b2.pdf ).
The only difference between the two is a really small difference in the
Bounding Box. I was able to track down the following: the latter one has
a small part of a very large street-polygon (
http://www.john-longo.org/a1.pdf ). Then I tried to request a pdf of
only a part of this street ( http://www.john-longo.org/a2.pdf ) with the
same width- and height-parameters in the wms-request. I expected that
the pdf with the whole street will be larger than the small part… Far
from it. 240 kb versus 490 kb. Why is a small part of a large polygon
blowing up the pdf output?
Any ideas? Thanks.
Not really. We are not generating the PDF by hand, but drawing on
a java graphics context provided by iText, the java pdf library.
To us it’s no different than drawing on the screen or on a printer,
it’s iText that is doing the pdf conversion.
We recently upgraded the version of iText we’re shipping with to
cope with a rendering issue, so you might get different results
with it. If better or worse, I don’t know… be sure the check
out GeoServer 1.6.0-rc2 next week and tell us how it’s working
for you.
Cheers
Andrea