How can I get Print to PDF to accept oversized page sizes?

Question

To level set, my platform is Mac OSX 10.6,  Snow Leopard. 
I sometimes create banners and such that are designed to be plotted/printed on large format printers.  For example, a banner might print to a page that is 12" x 72".
Now, I don't actually own such a printer, the FedEx Kinko's down the street does, hence I don't have a driver installed for it. 
I really don't know the "best" tool for creating these drawings. I have tried MS PowerPoint (which can't seem to accept paper wider than 56 inches) and have  used NeoOffice Draw, which  seems to work ok until it comes to printing time.
When I try to print to PDF, which is what the folks at Kinko's want, the printer systems always asks if I want to rescale the print to fit my 8-1/2 X 11 home printer(s).  No, just print it "as-is" is NOT a choice and neither is "Any Printer".   I end up having to crawl through setting up odd sized paper under "Any Printer" and somehow, I still don't really understand how, the print to PDF now saves the file sized to print as drawn.
So, I can see a few possible approaches to making this easier. 
Install the print driver for the printer at Kinko's.  Only, I don't think the installation process will allow that unless the printer is connected.
Develop a dongle that fools the Mac into thinking the printer is attached.  Cute idea that could make money if I sold them, but hardly reasonable.
Develop a dummy (virtual?) print driver that can be added without a physical printer having to be present and which opens a window when you "print" to it that allows you to specify the page size and other information with which it will "lie" to the OS and say, "Yes,  I am a printer capable of doing this....".  (FYI, I am a programmer going on 30 years now.)
So, before I teach myself Objective-C and how to use Xcode, is there a better or known solution?  Is there an existing product I can use?  Is there a driver development kit for virtual printers?  Any chance I could get a C++ kit and not have to learn Objective-C?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Macropanther wrote:
I don't think the installation process will allow that unless the printer is connected.
Incorrect. Win or Mac, you can install a printer driver w/o the printer being connected.
I have tried MS PowerPoint (which can't seem to accept paper wider than 56 inches) and have  used NeoOffice Draw
You're using the wrong tools. PP shouldn't even be in consideration; I don't know about NeoOffice, but I tried its cousin LibreOffice, and it has issues with custom paper sizes; which is not surprising, given what these apps were designed for.
What you need for actual banners (not web page banners) is a vector drawing tool or a DTP app. I'd say Illustrator or InDesign, but Adobe CS is expensive, and, if you're thinking of PowerPoint for this job, you're not ready for it.
You can try Pages; although not quite DTP, it can do the job and it's inexpensive. There are other options, such as Swift Publisher (a DTP app) or Intaglio (a drawing app) -- both are more expensive than Pages, but still affordable; or you can go open source with Scribus (DTP) or InkScape (vector; requires X11). You already know the ups and downs of using open source. (These are just examples; you can find others if you look for them.)
Although it's better to have Kinko's printer driver, to make sure of the correct options, you don't actually need it to print to PDF. You should be able to define a custom page size (eg, 12in × 72in) and create the PDF from it. Any app which uses the Mac OS X standard print function should be able to do it.