Code in comments
I made some changes to my WordPress install to make it easier to post code in comments. You can now post code by enclosing it in <code> or <pre>. You still have to escape <, >, and & as <, >, and &, but you no longer have to worry about wrapping, indentation, and smart quotes.
Making these changes was harder than I expected.
Allowing <pre> tags
I edited wp-includes/kses.php to allow <pre> tags. I will have to do this again every time I reinstall WordPress.
Preserving spacing and avoiding smart quotes
I installed Preserve code formatting. I edited it to only touch comments (I had already turned off formatting and texturizing for posts using Text Control). I also edited it to not try to escape HTML, because I consider that incorrect and because it was doing so in a way that caused > to be double-escaped.
Styles
I edited styles.css to make the rule for code also apply to pre, and added
text-align: left; white-space: pre;
to that rule.
May 24th, 2005 at 12:14 am
You might also want to add an overflow rule for pre – I’d guess that the risk of widening is why it’s not allowed by default.
May 24th, 2005 at 1:18 am
I’d rather let the code spill into the margins than make a scrollbar appear on each <pre> that overflows. Hopefully, someday I will have a layout where code overflowing into margins doesn’t look bad.
May 24th, 2005 at 2:47 am
On second thought, I’ll try out scrollbars.
pre { overflow: auto; max-height: 40em; padding: .5em; border: 1px solid #bbb; }May 26th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
You don’t have to edit kses.php every time, just put your own $allowed_tags in your wp-config.php file and define the CUSTOM_TAGS constant as true. Also don’t forget to copy your style changes into your own theme so upgrading is extra-easy.
May 27th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Will you be releasing your modified version of Preserve code formatting as well?
May 27th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
Alex, my only edits to the plugin were commenting out two or three lines.