DeskJet 3700 - misaligned print, clipping the top margin

[unfa]

Hi!

I have an HP DeskJet 3700 running with Linux Mint 18.3 XFCE edition.
I've installed the HPLIP software package and the printer initially seemed to work fine.
However - it turned out it's disrtoting all prints.

The printed page is offset up in relation to the paper, which results in the print to get clipped near the top page border.

I've tried playing with settings. I'vedefinded a custom A4 page format wiht no margins to prevent the clipping - to no avail.

I've run the internal diagnostics tool from the

HP Device Manager > Configure > Device > Diagnose HPLIP Driver...

It has printed a lot of text, witjh multiple messages like this one:

warning: Failed to read /etc/cups/ppd/DeskJet_3700.ppd ppd file

I've proceeeded to check if the file exists:

$ file /etc/cups/ppd/DeskJet_3700.ppd
/etc/cups/ppd/DeskJet_3700.ppd: regular file, no read permission

$ stat /etc/cups/ppd/DeskJet_3700.ppd
  Plik: '/etc/cups/ppd/DeskJet_3700.ppd'
  rozmiar: 19401         bloków: 40         bloki I/O: 4096   plik zwykły
Urządzenie: 801h/2049d    inody: 13238693    dowiązań: 1
Dostęp: (0640/-rw-r-----)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    7/      lp)
Dostęp:      2019-01-07 18:09:02.682429739 +0100
Modyfikacja: 2018-12-25 22:28:30.653491376 +0100
Zmiana:      2018-12-25 22:28:30.717491909 +0100

Looks like the PPD files have bad permissions set on them. How can I fix that? Also - can this be fixed in HPLIP?

[unfa]

Looks like the PPD file permissions don't matter. I changed them to more liberal, to no avail.

Now I've tried using the same printer wiht another machine running a different installation of Linux Mint 18.3 - the same problem occurs.

Printing a simple "Test" LibreOffice document makes the top margin strangely short. If I had a header, it woud be clipped.