Which should be used to format a block of text in code (monospace font). I personally believe that manually indenting each line of long console output or a log file can be very slow and repetitive, so those times, I often find myself using <pre></pre> tags. I also feel that it's much easier when creating a new line of code, you don't have to put 4 spaces at the start of each line.
So, should <pre></pre> tags be used over indentation for code blocks?
Manual pre/code allows you to stick HTML in code. This is both a positive and a negative, depending on what you want to show. If you want to embolden a line, as below:
dadasdasd
asdasdasd
asdasdasd
asdasdasd... pre/code makes sense. If you wanted to show the <strong> tag in use, it's a problem. You have to manually escape the tags.
I have personally settled on using four-spaces. You can highlight the entire block of code (once you've typed it, or pasted it in) and then press Control+K or press the <$> button in the toolbar and it'll do all the indentation for you.
I think that's a lot easier than messing around remembering to escape things.
The source of the code sample above:
<pre><code>dadasdasd
asdasdasd
as<strong>dasdasd</strong>
asdasdasd</code></pre>
<pre> and <code>? Don't they both do the same thing. Also, thanks for saying that you can highlight it all and press the <$> button, didn't know that.
<pre> should mean pre-formatted, <code> means it's code. Their CSS definitions here mean <code> isn't required inside a <pre> to get the right look, but it's a bad habit to fall into. See: stackoverflow.com/questions/11742907/…
:%s/^/ / in vim.