Question

My site is going to have some inline code (“when using the foo() function…”) and some block snippets. These tend to be XML, and have very long lines which I prefer the browser to wrap (i.e., I don’t want to use <pre>). I’d also like to put CSS formatting on the block snippets.

It seems that I can’t use <code> for both, because if I put CSS block attributes on it (with display: block;), it will break the inline snippets.

I’m curious what people do. Use <code> for blocks, and <samp> for inline? Use <code><blockquote> or something similar?

I’d like to keep the actual HTML as simple as possible, avoiding classes, as other users will be maintaining it.

Answer 1

Something I completely missed: the non-wrapping behaviour of <pre> can be controlled with CSS. So this gives the exact result I was looking for:

code { 
    background: hsl(220, 80%, 90%); 
}

pre {
    white-space: pre-wrap;
    background: hsl(30,80%,90%);
}

Here's an example demonstrating the <code>&lt;code&gt;</code> tag.

<pre>
Here's a very long pre-formatted formatted using the &lt;pre&gt; tag. Notice how it wraps?  It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...
</pre>

http://jsfiddle.net/9mCN7/