This is really just some useless whining, but my name is glyph, for goodness sake. Sometimes I just need to complain about fonts.

Firefox for Linux always seems to ship with the crappiest possible font configuration. Why? This is what the fonts look like by default on a fresh install of Firefox 1.5, and also in Ubuntu's unreleased "Dapper" distribution's current 1.5 package.

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Now, here is the same text rendered using fonts that are packaged with the distribution, and in fact, almost all Linux distributions these days:

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"FreeMono", "FreeSans", and "monospace". Was that really so hard?

This problem periodically comes up, and generally an unsatisfactory solution is proposed, the cure is worse than the disease, it's rejected, and we ignore the problem for another year.

The 1:1 correspondence of modules to files in Python is handy, but sometimes inconvenient. I would like to be able to write large, complex packages in Python but constrain the interface that they present, so that users only have to import one module in order to use them.

What is a good way to do this?

An astounding variety of people have been bothering me lately about Windows support for Mantissa, which I guess is emblematic of Divmod's recent success with its new infrastructure, so good. Unfortunately I, too, have been forced into the grimy nether-world of win32 lately, so I thought I'd make sure that things actually work properly.

Surprisingly enough, after a bit of tweaking, they do.

As of today's Divmod repository trunk, install command-line SVN, PuTTY, and Python, make sure they're all in your %PATH%, and then click on this:

You should then be able to do this:


Voila.

Okay, I cheated, but only a little. If you don't comment out ClickChronicle in Divmod.pth, you'll get a slew of harmless tracebacks in addition to the useful output given there.

Just a final reminder: I still need help moving tonight. I still have some rather heavy furniture to move, so if you haven't come out yet, please consider doing so. I would really appreciate it.

Thanks very much to the crew so far, especially JP and Itamar, both of whom showed up on two days.

Did you miss my last post?

Were you out of town?

Was the notice too short?

Are you concerned that your absence indicates the fact that you are a fundamentally bad person? That by abandoning your fellow man in his hour of great need, you have thereby fallen out of God's favor, and thereby damned your immortal soul?

Can you feel the fires of Hell itself already lapping at your feet?

Don't worry! It's not too late. You still have two more chances!

Today we moved most of the knickknacks and books, as well as the TV and several small bits of furniture. Tomorrow I'm moving clothing, boxing up the books that were already moved but now located in ungainly stacks in the new place, taking apart and throwing away furniture which cannot be moved whole, and moving my bed.

On Tuesday, when my Internet arrives upstairs, I will be boxing up the router, and moving my desk and Ying's desk. This is happening "after work", which, since I can do pretty much whatever the heck I want at work (and a faster move is certainly better for productivity) is whenever people start showing up to help. I would suggest 4PM.