About weakref

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defcon uses weakrefs to e.g. keep a reference to parent objects, but:

• weakref.proxy could be used instead of weakref.ref, to spare the need for manual dereferencing.
• I think weakrefs are not needed, and even that removing them would be a feature. Since version 2 the python GC can track cycles, so circular references only serve to tie object lifetimes, which I think is salutary in the case of parent refs. Consider the following code:

def giveMeGlyphA(path):
    font = Font(path)
    return font["A"]

glyph = giveMeGlyphA("/my/font")
glyph.font

Currently with weakrefs glyph.font would return None, whereas a strong reference would keep the font alive (until both font and glyph no longer have references). If the font's got multiple layers, here you could still access them rather than end up with an orphaned glyph etc.