Re: HTML and ASCII [was: Re: THE NEW FAQ [....] ]

C. Martin (aa7...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) wrote:

:    Your "that html code" reference is actually the key, I believe.
: Sure, <PRE> is nice, but try "<CODE>" instead, or in addition
: to.  Of course, I speak before I've tried this in reference
: to displaying ASCII art for say Lynx review, but whenever I
: think of <PRE>, I think of <CODE>, too.  Please let me know
: what you think on the matter. ;-)  Take Care and Blissed Be.

Well, <CODE> may not be the best choice for ascii art, as it is a text
level element used for displaying pieces of code.

 * It is intended as a semantic marker for code, not for ascii art.
 * Spaces are still collapsed inside it as normal.
 * Browsers are not required to render it monospaced - it is merely a
   convention.

<PRE>, on the other hand, stands for preformatted text, exactly what
ascii art is. If defined broadly enough, the terms are in fact
interchangeable. <PRE> is also the only non-deprecated HTML block level
element that instructs (note: even this isn't mandatory, as it may not
always be possible) the browser to render the contents monospaced.

As an example of semantically correct use of <PRE> and <CODE>, this
is adapted from beginner's guide to redcode:
(http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/corewar/guide.html)

[snip]
<p>This is just what another classic warrior by Dewdney, the
<em>Dwarf</em>, does. It "bombs" the core at regularly spaced
locations with <code>DAT</code>s, while making sure it doesn't hit
itself.</p>

<pre>
        ADD #4, 3        ; execution begins here
        MOV 2, @2
        JMP -2
        DAT #0, #0
</pre>
[snip]

For ascii art, it'd use <PRE>, possibly with style sheets. If one really
needs in-line ascii art, the tag to use would be <TT>, which is a text
level style tag that instruct the browser to render the contents as
monospaced ("teletype") text, *but otherwise normally*, ie. you'd need
to use &nbsp; (non-breaking space, 0xA0, an ISO-8859-1 character) instead
of spaces for ascii art.

[snip]
<P>I can't see much use for &lt;TT&gt; in ascii art, except maybe for
one-liners like this rose: <tt>---'--<@</tt></p>
[snip]  

--  __,,,------._
 ,-/|            `-.  Ilmari Karonen (ilt...@sci.fi) ^ All opinions expressed
/,  '\,     `.  ,|"-;;.__ http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/ | in this message are my
/ ' 4(_,-_,-"_,/.'   `'--' ,------------------------' own. If you want me to
"`-(_,-"" `-' (,' itz      | make some for you too, you should pay for them!

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