Text layout is hard and unfortunately drivers and firmware are often buggy (and as printing is lower and lower margin that doesn’t get better). But just throwing a weird language engine in doesn’t actually solve any of those problems.
The PDF tool assumes it doesn’t have to send the full font, and the document garbles. Print as image sometimes gets around this.
PDF isn’t entirely a panacea, since it’s complex enough that printing any random PDF isn’t trivial at all, but sure, close enough, but before you were talking about Postscript.
> Make printers do the PDF and let Adobe control trademark access via conformity tests and life is good.
PDF printers aren’t all that uncommon. So why doesn’t your Canon do this? These aren’t technical issues at all. This is an economic/financial problem as mentioned (doing business with Adobe!). This isn’t about part cost, a CPU 100x more powerful than the one in the LaserWriter is nothing.