Simon Willison’s Weblog

Haunted by old hacks

18th March 2003

Paul Hammond is seeking the perfect way of marking up code snippets. He examines several methods, including this interesting specimen:

<ol class="codeListing"> <li><code>…</code></li> … </ol>

As seen on the css-discuss wiki. This method is just wierd

It’s nice to have an old hack recognised :) The css-discuss wiki technique is something I put together last July as an experiment in the most semantic way of marking up code so as to get line numbers—as an ordered list. It’s pretty bizzare but it achieves the desired effect. These days my preferred method of marking up code is to use a <code> element nested inside a <pre>.