[Scribus] Printing errors

[John Jason Jordan]

Scribus 1.3.3.8 on Ubuntu Feisty, amd64

I have a number of laser printers. Today I wish to print to a Laserjet
5SiMx printer. This printer has genuine Adobe PostScript level 2. In
CUPS I have two drivers installed for it:

Laserjet-5Si
Laserjet-5Si-5Si-MX-PostScript-(recommended)

I think the first is a PCL-only driver, but CUPS is hard to figure out,
so I am not sure. The other is definitely PostScript. It uses the same
PPD file that I use to print from a Windows 2000 machine. I can print
using either driver from any application (except Scribus).

I have a four-page Scribus document to print. It is pretty simple, just
text (all open source TrueType fonts) and two images, both JPG files.
Everything appears fine on screen and in the Print Preview. When
printing Scribus displays no error messages. When I print to the
Laserjet-5Si the output is solid dark gray to the margins of the
printing area (the document margins are two cm.). When I print to the
Laserjet-5Si-5Si-MX-PostScript-(recommended) printer nothing at all
happens. In the CUPS dialog box no print job even appears. Yet from the
CUPS properties dialog box I can print a test page, so I know the
driver and connection are all working.

There is one other symptom. After trying to print to these drivers for
a while, suddenly CUPS won't respond at all. Whatever Scribus is doing
is not something that CUPS appreciates. Logging off and back on again
does not cure it. I can't stop and restart CUPS from the command line
because it no longer responds. The only solution is to shut down and
restart.

I'm out of ideas. Can someone suggest some troubleshooting tricks that
might lead me to a solution?