[cups] Text being garbled - Ricoh Pro 1156/1157 - Cups 1.5 and 1.7.2

[Chris Coleman]

Helge and Johannes thank you so much for providing so much helpful
information.
As I start digging in to your responses I have a couple quick
questions/responses.

1. Files are being generated originally outside of our org. with iText by
lowagie.com (r0.95)       <-- I'm afraid to say that is a 12 year old
version of iText ;-(
   and then we are doing some additional modifications (adding a 2d barcode
using PDFLib)
Producer:       PDFlib+PDI 9.0.3 (PHP5/Linux-x86_64)
CreationDate:   Thu Mar 31 13:05:12 2016
Tagged:         no
Pages:          18
Encrypted:      no
Page size:      612 x 792 pts (letter)
File size:      446215 bytes
Optimized:      no
PDF version:    1.4

2. Why does cups report the following? Johannes, you explained the
workflow, but this still seems quite odd to me...
Filetype: PDF
D [20/Apr/2016:14:06:40 -0700] [Job 1186] Neither PDF renderer command line
nor Ghostscript-based renderer command line found
D [20/Apr/2016:14:06:40 -0700] [Job 1186] Driver does not understand PDF
input, converting to PostScript

3. Unfortunately, we cannot use the PS PPD because not all of our printers
have the PS option on board.

4. I noticed that Poppler is being used for pdftops and tried to
build/install the latest version but was unable to get the make to work on
the ubuntu 12.04 boxes. Figured I'd give it a shot on the ubuntu 14 box,
but haven't gotten there yet.

Again, thank you so much, I will continue working my way through your
responses.
Chris