I have some code samples which I want to publish in an HTML document. I'm wrapping them with <code>, tags but I'd like them to be styled such that line breaks are preserved. I can do this by also enclosing them with <pre> tags, but I'd prefer to use CSS.
I've tried the following in IE7 (which according to this reference should work), but with no joy (line breaks are stripped):
code {
white-space: pre;
}
Is this possible?
Alexander Abakumov
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asked Jun 18, 2009 at 9:12
Matthew Murdoch
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If the line breaks are meaningful, then they are "content," not "style," and should be coded with <pre> tags. Would it change the meaning of your page if a user stylesheet reset your code to a different style?Thomas L Holaday– Thomas L Holaday2009年06月18日 09:25:40 +00:00Commented Jun 18, 2009 at 9:25
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The meaning would not be changed in that case (it's C code so line breaks are not meaningful to the parser).Matthew Murdoch– Matthew Murdoch2009年06月18日 09:44:19 +00:00Commented Jun 18, 2009 at 9:44
2 Answers 2
Are you sure you're not doing something wrong? This code works for me on IE7:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
code { white-space: pre; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<code>
function() {
alert('yay');
}
</code>
</body>
</html>
answered Jun 18, 2009 at 9:15
Paolo Bergantino
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1 Comment
sunyata
Thank you for this, it worked for me! I also found
pre-wrap which wraps both for line breaks in the text as well as when needed: w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_white-space.asp --- "Text will wrap when necessary, and on line breaks"Check your doctype is valid and on the first line. Maybe it's slipping into quirks mode?
Matthew Murdoch
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answered Jun 18, 2009 at 9:20
SpliFF
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