preformat-type Type of Preformatted Text

Type of content contained in the <preformat> element (for example, shape poetry, ASCII art, hand-created tabulations using tabs and spaces, etc.).

Usage/Remarks

Many journal tag sets make a distinction between different types of preformatted text (some by means of attributes, others with distinct elements). In this Tag Set, these different textual types will be tagged using either the element <preformat> or the element <code>. The element <code> is reserved for computer programs, XML instances and schema, pseudo-code, scripting snippets, etc. For the other preformatted text types, the distinctions between different types can be preserved using the @preformat-type attribute, for example, by recording the content type of the text, such as “man-machine” or “tabbed data”.
This attribute is intended to capture already recorded information; however, for many documents this type of data will not be available.
OPTIONAL on element: <preformat>
Value Meaning
Text, numbers, or special characters A word or phrase that describes the content or names the type of content for the <preformat> element, for example, “poetry” for a formatted poem laid out as a tree or “man-machine” for a man-machine dialog.
Restriction @preformat-type is an optional attribute; there is no default.

Suggested usage

Although designed to accept any text as its value, potential values for this attribute might include:
poetry
Poems
ascii
ASCII art
man-machine
A man-machine dialog, such as an error message and response
tabular
Tabular structures created by using spacing and tabs rather than tagging the row and column content using <array>
Tagged Sample

Error message

...
<preformat preformat-type="dialog" xml:space="preserve"
  position="anchor">
 C:\users\lap make
   'make' is not recognized as:
     - an internal or external command
     - an operable program
     - a batch file
</preformat>
...