mengwong - Troubleshooting the Tower of Babel

Sometimes I say to myself, "Meng, maybe we have too many fonts installed."



When pencil-and-paper stop working, the troubleshooting consists of four easy steps:
- does the pencil need sharpening? Sharpen.
- is the pencil too short? Get new pencil.
- are you out of paper? Get more paper.
- is your handwriting illegible? Practice calligraphy.

After Software Update marches you through an iTunes and Quicktime upgrade, followed by a mandatory reboot, and then Firefox renders the wrong glyphs for italic and non-ascii characters, the troubleshooting is just one step:
- it's opensource software. Open an editor and figure it out. (And have fun storming the castle!)

See also Joel on Software: the Law of Leaky Abstractions.