Type of content contained in the <preformat> element (for example, man-machine dialogs, poetry, ASCII art).
Many book 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, et al. 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-dialogue”.
This attribute is intended to capture already recorded information; however, for many documents this type of data will not be available.
| 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, “code” for sample computer code or “xml” for an XML-tagged data sample. |
| Restriction: | |
Although designed to accept any text as its value, potential values for this attribute might include:
code | Code example in a computer language such as C++ or Visual Basic |
poetry | Poems |
ascii | ASCII art |
man-machine | A man-machine dialog, such as an error message and response |
pseudocode | Code-like examples used in explanation |