I am all for the <pre> tag here at the Monastery. Keeping with the spirit of Perl, there is more than one way to do it. I can post DATA with <pre> tags and CODE with <code> tags. Notice how the d/l code link only displays what i want it to display:

<xml>
   <foo>bar</foo>
</xml>

print while <DATA>;
[download]

Just my two cents. Plus, i'd have to fix a lot of broken nodes if you took away my <pre> tag. ;)

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

There's a social reason, which I won't go into, as jeffa did a good job explaining it already. There's also a technical reason: we /first/ convert code tags to pre tags, /then/ we check for allowed tags. Twere it only easy to change...