In practice, you just change the device's name in its web ui. Then it's starts advertising the new name, and the old name stops working. If you have enough of a model of this to change the name, you also know enough to select the printer under it's new name. Of course it would be nice if we could have it publish some kind of announcement about the name change.
On Thu, May 31, 2018, 14:22 Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 01/06/2018 00:07, David R. Oran wrote: > > On 30 May 2018, at 19:39, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > > >> On 31/05/2018 08:53, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote: > >>>> Well, let me invent something. I throw together my network and > >>>> it > >>>> names the printers as printer1 and printer2. Being a stickler, > >>>> I decide to rename them as Printer 1 and Printer 2. I mess > >>>> around > >>>> and find a config file somewhere and manually edit it. > >>> > >>> Let me rephrase it: > >>> > >>> « For her birthday, I bought my girlfriend the nice printer she's > >>> been > >>> wanting. The network named it "Printer7839cf31". Since I love my > >>> girlfriend, I renamed it to "Mathilda's printer". Now she can no > >>> longer > >>> print. » > >>> > >>>> It would be good if you could come up with a real example. This > >>>> isn't > >>>> going to happen in practice, > >>> > >>> (Giggle.) > >> > >> We'll see. As it says in every good shop: the customer is always > >> right. > >> > > Apple doesn’t think so and it may at least partially account for the > > fact that their products successfully auto-configure way more frequently > > than those of the competition. > > I'm not sure that's as true as it used to be; my recent experiences with > attaching off-the-shelf printers to another o/s have been positive. > However, > that's with very simple network topology. > > > If there’s a lesson to be learned from this example it’s that either > > you don’t allow automatically-named things to change their names, or > > if you provide a user-friendly feature to change the name it “just > > works” and doesn’t break the associated function. I guess this means > > that if you rely on DNS to discover and use names, then you provide an > > update API and not allow “write-behind” to config files (if they > > exist in the first place). > > I agree. Without the ability for users to attach names of their choice > (in scripts of their choice) to devices, there will be millions of > unhappy users. > > > Now, if the name-changing auto-configuration functions are broken, then > > either there has to be a way to diagnose it (maybe only by the people > > who sold you the printer) and a way to revert to the prior > > configuration. That diagnostic function does in my view not have to be > > something easily done by the home user. > > Are you sure? The people who sell you printers today operate on very > tight profit margins. In practice, I don't think expert diagnosis is > a realistic expectation. > > Regards > Brian > >
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