  Sometime ago, we showed that a pure Artin braid group is not K\"ahler, i.e.
it is not the fundamental group of a compact K\"ahler manifold. This used a
result of Bressler, Ramachandran and the author that K\"ahler groups cannot be
too "big". The goal here is to study the problem of K\"ahlerness for other
braid groups. The main result is that, with some trivial exceptions, the pure
braid group of a Riemann surface with at least 2 strands is never K\"ahler. In
some cases the proof uses the previous strategy, for others it plays off some
homological properties of braid groups established beforehand against
consequences of the Beauville-Catanese-Siu theorem. The braid group of a
projective manifold of complex dimension 2 or more is shown to the fundamental
group of a projective manifold, and hence K\"ahler.
