Pre

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= Index DOT Html by Brian Wilson [bloo@blooberry.com] =

What is it?: The PRE element indicates text that has been formatted for the screen and is rendered using a fixed-width font. All characters are interpreted literally and retained in display, including multiple spaces, tabs, carriage returns and linefeeds (all other cases of HTML collapse multiple spaces, tabs, CRs, or linefeeds to a single space.)

Common Attributes
%Core%: 2 | 3 | 3.2 | 4 | IE3 | M | N4B2 | O
%Events%: 2 | 3 | 3.2 | 4 | IE4B1 | M | N | O
%Language%: 2 | 3 | 3.2 | 4 | IE4 | M | N | O
Specific Attributes
Width
2 | 3 | 3.2 | 4 | IE | M | N | O: Required? No; Description:
This attribute specifies the maximum number of characters for a line and allows the browser to select a suitable font and indentation. Values of 40, 80 and 132 characters should be presented optimally, with other widths being rounded up.; Values: Positive integer values

Parent Model: %Block Parent%
Content Model: %In-line Content%
Exceptions: <applet> | <basefont> | <big> | <blink> | | <iframe> | <img> | | <object>

Tips & Tricks

General

DTD Note: The HTML specifications have always gone out of their way to exclude objects and size modifying markup from PRE content. HTML 4.0 continues this trend, but does not exclude the IFRAME element. This seems odd since other objects like IMG, APPLET and OBJECT ARE excluded.
DTD Note: I excluded the NOBR and BLINK elements, from the PRE content model. These elements are very similar to other excluded physical markup in the HTML 4.0 DTD.
The HTML 3.2 specification lists support for the WIDTH attribute. The specification at one time had a note by this attribute asking: "Does anyone support this?". Of the reviewed browsers, none do.
Application of styles in PRE should not have any effect on the preservation of spaces.

Spaces

Tabs

"The horizontal tab character (code position 9 in the HTML document character set) must be interpreted as the smallest positive nonzero number of spaces which will leave the number of characters so far on the line as a multiple of 8. Documents should not contain tab characters as they are not supported consistently." With this caveat, it is easy to see that the behavior of tabs may be VERY inconsistent from browser to browser.

Linefeeds and Carriage Returns

There are different forms of linefeeds and carriage returns used on different operating systems. All of them should be preserved.

Browser Peculiarities

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