PRE

Description

The PRE element defines a separated multi-line set of text

to be rendered as it exists in the source document with

the same line breaks and spaces.

Normal text removes multiple spaces and line breaks in the source.

Minimum Attributes

<PRE>characters...

</PRE>

All Possible Attributes

<PRE WIDTH=number

LANG="..."

DIR=ltr|rtl

ID="..."

CLASS="..."

CLEAR=left|right|all|"..."

>characters...

</PRE>

Elements Allowed Within...

elements

and parsed character data

Allowed In Content Of...

Any entity that permits members of group

Variations

RFC 1866 states that the content of PRE is intended to be

formatted with a monospaced font.

For backwards compatibility with some existing documents,

RFC 1866 encourages browsers to accept the <P> element

in the PRE content and treat it as if it were the <BR> element.

While RFC 1866 states that within PRE content the tab character should

position to the next 8 character boundary, it recommends

that HTML documents not contain the tab character.

Version 3 encourages using the proposed element instead.

The LANG and DIR attributes are introduced with the

internationalization proposal.

One typical use of PRE has been for tables, but the Version 3

element is proposed to fulfill that requirement.

The CLEAR attribute is proposed in Version 3.

RFC 1866 states that the attribute WIDTH specifies the

maximum number of characters for a line.

Some browsers have interpreted this as specifying

the minimum number of characters that the browser should

try to insure are displayed on a single line, possibly by selecting

a smaller font size.

Many browsers ignore the WIDTH attribute, and Version 3 is discussing

the possibility of removing it.

The PRE element is Level 0.