[pdftex] Replacement for psframebox?

[Geoffrey Alan Washburn]

I've been recently revising an old document and in a few places it uses 
the following macro to put boxes around bits of syntax

\newcommand{boxy}[1]{\psframebox[framesep=1pt,linewidth=0.5pt]{#1}}

The problem is that I've become somewhat enamored with the new 
microtypographic features of pdftex.  And is well known, PSTricks is not 
compatible with pdftex.

I tried replacing \psframebox with a use of LaTeX's \fbox, but this 
results in far more padding between the boxes' border and the contents 
than is aesthetically pleasing.  I think I might be able to hack around 
this by placing the contents in a box register and  mucking with its 
size after the fact (much like \smash).

I've also seen a package called pst-pdf, but it isn't really clear that 
this does what one might imagine.

So I figured I would ask if anyone out there has a better solution for 
the boxing of text in pdftex.  Thanks!