The CUPS PDF program saves printed PDFs to the ~/PDF directory from any program.

apt install cups-pdf

The output directory can be configured by editing the “Out” directory in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf

Matlab/GNU Octave figure save PDF

• if you already have Matlab open, just restart Matlab to make the PDF printer available.

• Workaround for Java bug stopping Matlab from printing in color–this will create a color PDF test.pdf in your current directory.

  imagesc(rand(10))
  
  print(gcf,'-dpdf','test.pdf')

Matplotlib figure save PDF

This can be accomplished by either

• save to PDF from the Matplotlib figure GUI

• use figure.savefig() to save to PDF from Matplotlib. Example:

  from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
  
  fg = figure()
  ax = fg.gca()
  ax.plot(range(10))
  
  fg.savefig('line.pdf',bbox_inches='tight',dpi=300)