QGIS » QGIS Application

It would be good if we had better handling of transparent vector layers when exporting to PDF, more akin to the behaviour offered by ArcGIS.
Currently, having transparent vectors in a map forces the map composer to rasterise the entire layout, which is often undesirable when including these maps in (for example) corporate reports.

I think a better behaviour would be to do the following when vector pdf output is desired:
a) Only rasterise the map item itself (plus any other images in the map composer), but leave other items such as text which are outside the map item alone.
b) Within the map composer, only rasterise the transparent vector layer and those layers that fall beneath it. Other vector layers above this transparent layer should remain as vectors.