I'm trying to achieve a combination of three goals...
Determine if I should use <code><pre>...</pre></code>
or <pre><code>...</code></pre>
?
Make code not wrap, not create horizontal scrollbars and not overflow any parent element.
Ensure that when a visitor copies code that the white-space is maintained when they paste it in to any (competent) editor.
So far I've had the most luck with white-space: pre-wrap;
however I do not want the text to wrap. If they're interested enough they'll copy-paste it for themselves. While I do not want it to wrap I also do not want it to make the element overflow outside of any parent element and I don't want the text to appear outside of it's direct parent element.
I'd be okay with a horizontal scrollbar for the code itself (pre
or code
element, whichever) though I'd generally prefer not to.
Just in case it's relevant I don't use any CSS frameworks or the likes, I only do a basic reset...
* {border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; }
I test in Firefox, then Chrome, then (actual) Opera and then maybe IE if I have sanity to spare. Thoughts please?
I got it working to an accuracy of about 99.8% of the time using the following...
XHTML
<pre><code>/* Code here. */</code></pre>
CSS
pre {white-space: pre; width: 75vmax;}