Monospaced font not working

Question

WikiTree has a CSS file that resets some of the default formatting of most HTML elements: http://www.wikitree.com/css/base.css

The first rule includes

code, tt { font: inherit }

which are never overridden.  This means the <code> and <tt> elements don't work — or at least they don't cause a monospaced font to be used.    Class marks and reference codes, especially when they're not just numeric, look much better formatted in a monospaced font, and at the moment this is painful to achieve.  Instead of writing <tt>RG12/911</tt>, you need something like

<span style="font-family: monospace">RG12/911</span>

which is verbose and hardly intuitive if you're not familiar with the details of HTML and CSS.  This could easily be fixed by appending the correct default (per the CSS 2.1 spec) to base.css.

code, tt { font-family: monospace }

Answer 1

Recently, after much discussion in G2G, the decision was made that using html and inline CSS on profiles was going to be, except for some recommended tags, not recommended. This is largely a reflection that not all users are conversant in html and css and may be intimidated away from contributing to profiles when they see a lot of code they are not familiar with; the other large issue is to limit disputes over aesthetics styling which can be very difficult to resolve.

Therefore the first issue to broach is if <tt> should be included in the list of recommended tags... If the community supports its inclusion as a recommended tag, then the CSS should obviously be changed, otherwise it would seem there isn't much point.

Personally, i don't see a reason not to include <tt> on the recommended tags, but I am also reasonably well versed in HTML and may not be an objective judge.

Comments

I certainly agree with not recommending inline CSS and restricting HTML usage to a few recommended tags.  However I think there is a case for including <tt> in the list of recommended tags for the reasons I gave.  It's no more complex than any of the other recommended tags, and allows you to do something you cannot achieve with out it.  Alternatively, we could add a template, say Template:id, that simply does <tt>{{{1}}}</tt> for handling document identifiers, class marks, and such like.  Then that becomes are accepted use, and direct use of <tt> remains not recommended.  (And if it's too difficult to get base.css fixed, the template could be made to use inline CSS.)

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Thanks, Rob and Richard.

If you do want to make a case for <tt> being recommended, maybe ask that as a new question and explain when it should be used.

In other words, what style rule would call for it?

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Chris, The main use case is pretty much what I said above.  Class marks and reference codes, especially when they're not just numeric, look much better formatted in a monospaced font.  E.g.

1901 Census of England, Hampshire, Fawley, folio 22, page 8, George Smith; <tt>RG13/911</tt>, The National Archives, Kew, Surey, UK.  Digital images on Ancestry.com.

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How do I make sure this thread doesn't get forgotten?