Encouraged by this account of easy-debian and its actual usefulness:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=41605

and the fact that easy-debian has moved up into Extras, I installed easy-debian (see also
http://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian )

Easy-Debian has gimp and openoffice with printing support, but to my initial disappointment no CUPS, the Unix printing system for network printers. However, it was really easy to install on top of it (in the Debian environment, not the XTerminal, where you wouldn't find cups yet!):
("sudo" is superfluous when done from Debian chroot instead of a terminal within Debian LXDE)

Although a disturbingly long list of packages got installed automatically in the process, it reduced the available space for the Debian system by only 10% or so. There were also some warnings and even "fatal" errors when installing and starting cups, but it came out completely functional.

And it brought the printing (cups) support I was hoping for to openoffice. However, what I was really longing for was the possibility to print things I download in Maemo. Now, with Debian chroot I can do so rather easily, and I don't have to wait any longer for cups appearing within Maemo proper some time in the future.

So to those still waiting for cups, as I did, I can recommend doing the same. Install easy-deb-chroot and then cups within that! Postscript and pdf files downloaded on the N900 can subsequently be printed out by opening the Debian chroot terminal, so no need to start the LXDE (which I found somewhat tedious to use, despite its coolness factor).

In Debian chroot, I just do "su - user" to switch to /home/user and non-root identity. Then "lpstat -a" shows me the list of available network printers, and with "lp -d printername filename" I can send files to the chosen printer. Easy! And Debian!

In XTerminal, one can run single easy-debian commands like the above (as user) by e.g.
Or if it's a word or openoffice document, "debbie ooffice" or
"debbie oowriter /home/user/.../filename" and then print out from openoffice 3 (with due patience, but much quicker than through LXDE, and for me also with correct keyboard).

I guess after my experience with packages from extras-devel that made the update to PR1.1 slightly bumpy (in fact only one package: vpnc), I now feel actually more comfortable to be able to install stuff in the Debian image and use it from there, without having to tamper with Maemo when I don't fully understand the consequences (as was the case with vpnc).

UPDATE: There is one more thing that needs to be done so that cups gets started again after one has powered down and restarted the N900:
Open Debian chroot and add a startup script for cups as follows:
If you want to do this under XTerminal, you have to instead modify or create $CHROOT/var/run/onfirstchroot.rc where $CHROOT is the Debian mountpoint. (Thanks to qole for both easy-debian and telling me about the option of startup scripts!)

UPDATE2: The above startup script is not needed when your printers are handled by another cups server in your network. In that case it's sufficient to do
instead of the full cups package.