[Brother printer]
> I did manage to get the printer going. I should have mentionned long
> ago what the final problem was.
>
> It turns out I was trying to print a pdf to a postscript printer. I
> thought that pdf was a specialized form of postscript, the way inkscape
> files are a specialized form of svg. Turns out that was completely
> wrong.
This suggests that something is wrong with the driver/ input filter
setup. That's supposed to convert the input file to something the
printer understands. I can print PostScript, PDF and a number of kinds
of files just fine.