*Use real Adobe Acrobat* Unfortunately, Phil, Adobe ceased supporting Adobe Acrobat on the Linux platform some years ago. :-( I think 2013 was their last update. Ver. 9.5.5. Anyhow, I tracked down <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/> and installed a copy of that. The errant page printed *correctly*!
I double-checked printing the self-same PDF file using the native PDF handlers Okular, qpdfview and Evince, and the output is *corrupted* in each case. * Use a different font* I've just replaced the fontsspec call to {CMU Serif Italic} with a call to {TeX Gyre Pagella}, which I use often with success and pleasure, and now the printout is *correct* in all cases. *Input normalization* I left {CMU Serif Italic} as the document font, and added \XeTeXinputnormalization=1 to the preamble This also produced PDF that printed *correctly* in all cases. This is obviously the least fiddly solution. Thanks to all of you for puzzling about this! I'm still unhappy with the nature of the problem, which seems to lie where the font and the postscript printer driver touch. But at least there are some satisfactory workarounds. Dominik
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