[cups.general] Handling text files with CUPS?

[David Miller]

I recently changed my CUPS print server from RHEL4 to RHEL5 and now  
I'm seeing much different results when printing text files from the  
command line using a plain lp command.

Here is a quick rundown of my setup.

RHEL5.1 CUPS connected to HP 81x0 and xerox phaser type printers via  
LPR. All the HP printers are using the models built in CUPS PPD  
driver. The Xerox phasers are using PPD drivers from Xerox. Most of  
the nodes that print through the server are running RHEL4.6. They are  
setup to print through the server using a client.conf file.  I have  
one HP-UX machine that has queues setup to the print server through LPR.

Symptoms I'm seeing.

If a user prints a text file from the command line on one of the RHEL  
clients the results are much different than the old RHEL4 server. The  
font is bigger and lines are getting wrapped when they did not before.

I have had limited success using an lpoptions file on the server. The  
HP-UX box adheres to the lpoptions on the server. The RHEL clients for  
the most part do not. I have to setup the same lpoptions file on the  
RHEL clients to get any change. Here is a sample of an option I set  
for one of the printers.

Dest hplj5 job-sheets=none cpi=12 lpi=7 page-bottom=50 page-left=50  
page-right=10 page-top=50 scaling=100 wrap=false

The funny thing is that if the server does not have the lpoptions file  
and the RHEL clients do, the fonts come out larger or bolder. It would  
appear that the RHEL systems are converting the file to postscript  
before shipping it off to the print server at which point the print  
server is also doing something to the file. The HP-UX box sends the  
file as text so it is only manipulated by the print server.

How do I make my RHEL clients stop manipulating the job and let the  
server handle it? Also how do I change the job on the server to use  
smaller fonts, and stop wrapping lines. It isn't even consistent with  
the line wrapping either. It is wrapping lines that are shorter than  
others. The only difference is that the wrapped lines have spaces or  
tab separation in characters.  For example, a line with nothing but   
==== all the way to the end of the margin, and only one = is beyond  
the margin. It will only wrap the last =. If I have a line like  
"0.000209   0.000204 0.000206" and only the last character is beyond  
the margin it will wrap the whole 0.000206 instead of just the 6.


David.