I'm having trouble getting fixed-width strings to work on i3blocks.

[anthony-S93]

I wrote a simple python script to obtain my internet traffic

#!/usr/bin/python

import os
download_speed = 0.0
upload_speed = 0.0
nmcli_command = "nmcli device status | grep -w 'connected' | cut -d ' ' -f 1"
device_type = os.popen(nmcli_command).read().rstrip()
get_traffic = "awk '{{if(l1){{print ($2-l1)/1024,($10-l2)/1024}} else{{l1=$2; l2=$10;}}}}' <(grep {0} /proc/net/dev) <(sleep 0.5; grep {0} /proc/net/dev)".format(device_type)
traffic = os.popen(get_traffic).read().rstrip()

output_format = "<span foreground='#89ca78' weight='bold'> {down:7.2f} kb/s</span> <span foreground='#ef596f' weight='bold'>      {up:7.2f} kb/s</span>"


if traffic:
    # network is available.
    rates = traffic.split(" ")
    download_speed = float(rates[0])
    upload_speed = float(rates[1])

output = output_format.format(down=download_speed, up=upload_speed)
print(output)

Then, I have the following entry in my i3blocks.conf:

markup=pango

[internet-traffic]
command=~/.config/i3/scripts/internet-traffic
interval=1
separator_block_width=10

Everything works as expected except for the "fixed-width" feature. The final output string inside the python script has a fixed length, yet i3blocks still added extra spaces to the string displayed when the numbers get large. Why is this the case? If the resulting string has a fixed length, shouldn't the entire block have a fixed length?

Notice how the length of the block lengthens every time the numbers get larger.

[smlx]

Is your font fixed width?