When submitting a text file to a printer (HP Color LaserJet 4650) from a Debian 8/openbox system, the -p or -o prettyprint option is ignored. Printing the same file from a MacOS X system produces a document with proper -p formatting. I am trying to identify the source of the problem on the linux system. A question posted elsewhere noted that placement of the characters /* at the beginning of the file could resolve problems with the -p option, but this had no effect in my situation. I doubt, but do not exclude, the possibility of a bug in the edition of CUPS packaged with Debian 8. Alternatively, the source could be an absent or incorrect printer driver. How can the failure to use the -p option be explained? What firmware, software, configuration files, etc should be checked?
Edit 1: I should note that in addition Unix-style newline characters (\n) are ignored by the printer and must be replaced by Windows-style newline characters (\r\n) by, e.g., awk 'sub("$", "\r")'. This suggests that the underlying issue may relate to the printer driver, since the printer apparently expects \r\n whereas lpr sends documents with n alone.
Edit 2: The problem seems more general than originally indicated. Several other options (-o landscape, -o scaling=100) are also ignored for text or postscript files. While I haven't exhaustively tried all lpr options, it seems safe to conclude that the entire set of available options is being ignored.
