[matplotlib-devel] Misleading installation instructions in INSTALL file

Hello,

first let me thank you for your excellent software - I think
it is just wonderful and very pleasant to use.

Two small things came up when I installed 0.91.1 into
my home directory (I didn't want to mess with the debian
packages since they are usually very fast in updating them)

This passage in the INSTALL file is misleading:

Note that if you install matplotlib anywhere other than the default
location, you will need to set the MATPLOTLIBDATA environment
variable to point to the install base dir.


Instead of setting MATPLOTLIBDATA to the base dir I specified
with setup.py install --prefix /home/mo/mpl I had to set
it to

/home/mo/mpl/lib/python2.4/site-packages/matplotlib/mpl-data/

for mathtext to find its fonts.

Secondly this passage in  matplotlib/mathtext.py

 544         if cached_font is None:
 545             try:
 546                 font = FT2Font(basename)
 547             except RuntimeError:
 548                 return None

Where an unfound font file is not reported but rather a None font object
is returned just causes a Null pointer exception to be raised very
shortly afterwards without the important info as to the
real reason. Maybe the RunTimeError should just be raised as is
or handled in a more informative manner?

Thanks again and sorry for my nitpicking,

Mario Oschwald