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A fairly common solution I've seen to issues like this is to use different font faces for literal text and meta-notation. Often it will be a monospace "teletype" or sans-serif font for literal text...
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#2: Post edited
by
Derek Elkins
·
2020-12-21T03:29:08Z (almost 4 years ago)
Note that the styles are not rendered.
- A fairly common solution I've seen to issues like this is to use different font faces for literal text and meta-notation. Often it will be a monospace "teletype" or sans-serif font for literal text and a contrasting (usually lighter) variable width font for meta-notation.
- For your example, you'd get:
- <span style="font-family: monospace">ARRAY[</span> *data-type*[ <span style="font-family: monospace">,</span> *count*] <span style="font-family: monospace">]</span>
In case that doesn't render well, here are compromise mimics using `code`:- `ARRAY[`*data-type*[`,` *count*]`]`
- or **bold**:
- **ARRAY[** *data-type*[ **,** *count*] **]**
- Other text decorations such as underlining could be used to make it clear what is literal text. I've mostly seen this in older hand-typed documents.
- As you can tell from the examples, it is easy to distinguish the literal brackets from the meta-brackets.
- Whatever the approach, it would be explicitly documented in the early part of the documentation but is often intuitive enough even if someone skips that explanation.
- A fairly common solution I've seen to issues like this is to use different font faces for literal text and meta-notation. Often it will be a monospace "teletype" or sans-serif font for literal text and a contrasting (usually lighter) variable width font for meta-notation.
- For your example, you'd get:
- <span style="font-family: monospace">ARRAY[</span> *data-type*[ <span style="font-family: monospace">,</span> *count*] <span style="font-family: monospace">]</span>
- In case that doesn't render well, here are compromise mimics using `code`:
- `ARRAY[`*data-type*[`,` *count*]`]`
- or **bold**:
- **ARRAY[** *data-type*[ **,** *count*] **]**
- (Indeed, the static renderer strips the style attributes making the first example pointless. If you edit the answer, you will see the intended effect in the preview.)
- Other text decorations such as underlining could be used to make it clear what is literal text. I've mostly seen this in older hand-typed documents.
- As you can tell from the examples, it is easy to distinguish the literal brackets from the meta-brackets.
- Whatever the approach, it would be explicitly documented in the early part of the documentation but is often intuitive enough even if someone skips that explanation.
#1: Initial revision
by
Derek Elkins
·
2020-12-21T03:25:45Z (almost 4 years ago)
A fairly common solution I've seen to issues like this is to use different font faces for literal text and meta-notation. Often it will be a monospace "teletype" or sans-serif font for literal text and a contrasting (usually lighter) variable width font for meta-notation. For your example, you'd get: <span style="font-family: monospace">ARRAY[</span> *data-type*[ <span style="font-family: monospace">,</span> *count*] <span style="font-family: monospace">]</span> In case that doesn't render well, here are compromise mimics using `code`: `ARRAY[`*data-type*[`,` *count*]`]` or **bold**: **ARRAY[** *data-type*[ **,** *count*] **]** Other text decorations such as underlining could be used to make it clear what is literal text. I've mostly seen this in older hand-typed documents. As you can tell from the examples, it is easy to distinguish the literal brackets from the meta-brackets. Whatever the approach, it would be explicitly documented in the early part of the documentation but is often intuitive enough even if someone skips that explanation.