Sunday, August 21, 2011

Formatting problem solved

[ UPDATE: So I discovered that the line breaks setting below seems to be retroactive, and changing it messes up the old posts. Another solution is to substitute newlines in the code with <br /> tags. That's what I've done here, and seems OK. This makes it difficult to actually edit code samples in the editor, but them's the breaks. :) ]

On the topic of how to format code samples for the blog, I've been doing some testing and found that the combination of

Settings > Formatting
section: Convert line breaks
No

and

Settings > Basic
section: Global > Select post editor
Updated editor

appears to have solved the problems that cropped up (my post here) with my standard approach using <table>. A sample:

def f(n):
print "Hello world!"

And I like it that the new editor's preview mode gives an accurate view of the product.

However, there are other solutions to consider, including how to get syntax highlighting without needing to load resources that are out of my control (my SO question is here), or whether to use a code hosting service and "embed" the code here. I'll have to get back to you on that.