Just got printing to work. I never figured out what I was doing wrong, I started purging both cups and system-config-printer between attempts in an effort to make sure there was no cruft remaining between failures.
After about half a dozen tries things started working. I suspect that part of my trouble might have been in using the "back" button in the browser looking at localhost. In the initial "find printers" page several entries for the same printer appear, but the differences aren't visible until "continue" is pressed. When I stopped backing up things started to work. I'm likewise sceptical that "delete printer" will overcome severe misconfiguration.
In any case, all the important features of Raspbian are now working in just under a week. By my reconing, for free software, that's not bad.
Thanks for reading!
bob prohaska