Well, installing cups here has not installed gutenprint. I guess it is not automatically selected as not all printers need the gutenprint support. Presumably mention of any necessary extra packages required happens sometime during the setting up of a cups printer?
I don't think that setting up the printer will do it. I don't know what triggers installing it, other than selecting it.
You mention the "Install Cups Printer" tool (CupsGUI) but neglect to say where to find it
It is where it has always been:
http://trac.netlabs.org/ecups/wiki/CupsPort.
possibly cupsd.exe is not starting, does not appear in any process list.
Well, that is the first problem to fix. Try starting it from a command line, it should either run (with a black screen), or fail with some sort of message.
No, I doubt you mean this printer install app as selecting Install a local or network printer (CUPS-based) closes the app with nothing else happening.
CUPSD.EXE must be running.
When/If I eventually get to set up a cups(rpm) printer I will need to use the bjnp printer port; bjnp.exe 1.9.2 requires the installation of cups17.dll - something else that a user would have to know as cups(rpm) does not include the port or support file. I guess cups17.dll should be copied into /usr/lib where other cups related dll files live.
No, something like that, which is not managed by ANPM, should be in /usr/local/lib (which may not exist, but should be in LIBPATH). BJNP.EXE should be in /usr/local/sbin which should also be in the PATH statement, but may not exist.
So far this yum/rpm installation of cups is harder work than installing from the (non-rpm) ecups zip files.
So far, you haven't cleaned out the cruft from before, and that is probably causing grief. Did you use WarpIn to UNINSTALL all of the stuff that is replaced by YUM? Did you remove all of the things that you installed by ZIP? Did you UNINSTALL the old CUPS? Unfortunately, ANPM (YUM/RPM) does NOT do any of that for you, and that leaves a lot of possibilities for finding incorrect DLLs, and other things. As you noted, the best way to start with ANPM (RPM/YUM) is to start with a fresh install. There is a LOT of cleanup to do if you start with an old install.
For the rpm/yum install method to work it need some way of setting up what it is supposed to install especially where there are several options that may, or may not, be required.
The way that that is done, is to READ the program instructions, and install everything that it calls for, whether you think it is already installed, or not. The program sorts it out, and installs what you need (as long as the instructions are correct, and that has been known to be a problem sometimes).
You must remember that RPM/YUM is designed to have full control over your system. In *NIX that is the case. In OS/2, there are many other ways to do things, and RPM/YUM doesn't know about that. The easy way to overcome that problem, is to simply remove all of the things that RPM/YUM doesn't control, and install them using RPM/YUM. The bad part about that, is that RPM/YUM doesn't have everything that you might need, so those things need to be installed in some other way. Once you get over the desire to control what is on your system, and just let RPM/YUM do it for you (using ANPM as a front end processor, to make it easy), it all starts to work properly.
Having said all of that, I will suggest that you go back to what was working, and start using RPM/YUM when you do a new install. It will make life a lot easier. Be assured, that CUPS works well, when properly installed, but CUPS is a pretty complicated program (as you well know), and getting all of the parts to work together takes some planning. CUPS, from RPM/YUM, is not the same as what you may have installed in other ways, it does require that everything works in the RPM/YUM way, and it won't cooperate if something is missing (or possibly duplicated elsewhere).
One problem, that I know about, is that there is a package called "sdl" (lower case), that will prevent an updated package "SDL" (upper case) from being installed. If "sdl" is installed, uninstall it, and install "SDL", but watch for other things that may be uninstalled with it. You may need to reinstall them. ffmpeg will install "sdl", if "SDL" is not already installed, for instance. That is a packaging problem, that nobody seems to want to fix.