You can refer to more extensive text of documentation with a url to the perldocs. Smaller text is trivial to reformat as needed to put in code tags.
Theoretically the hosting server could use something like Pygmy or similar package to remove all extra whitespace and apply a consistant formatting style to all code tagged blocks..with caching etc. But then that sounds like too much work and testing.
I do agree that the automated line breaks with added plus signs are a bit of an eye-sore. Doesn't help also that you can't TAB indent easily when typing a little code snippet.
the hardest line to type correctly is: stty erase ^H

In reply to Re: using <pre> tags for citing perldocs! by aquarium
in thread using <pre> tags for citing perldocs! by LanX

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.