This element is displayed “verbatim”; whitespace and line breaks within this element are significant.

Unlike programlisting and screen, which usually imply a font change, literallayout does not. How spaces are to be represented faithfully in a proportional font is not addressed by DocBook.

The class attribute gives users control over the font used in literallayouts. If the class attribute is specified and its value is monospaced, then the literallayout will be presented in a monospaced font, probably the same one used for other verbatim environments. The default value for class is normal, meaning that no font change will occur.

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

any attribute

Any attribute in any other explicit namespace

class

Specifies the class of literal layout

Enumerated values:
“monospaced”	The literal layout should be formatted with a monospaced font
“normal”	The literal layout should be formatted with the current font

continuation

Determines whether line numbering continues from the previous element or restarts

Enumerated values:
“continues”	Line numbering continues from the immediately preceding element with the same name.
“restarts”	Line numbering restarts (begins at 1, usually).

language

Identifies the language (i.e. programming language) of the verbatim content

linenumbering

Determines whether lines are numbered

Enumerated values:
“numbered”	Lines are numbered.
“unnumbered”	Lines are not numbered.

startinglinenumber

Specifies the initial line number

xml:space

Can be used to indicate explicitly that whitespace in the verbatim environment is preserved. Whitespace must always be preserved in verbatim environments whether this attribute is specified or not

Enumerated values:
“preserve”	Whitespace must be preserved.

These elements contain literallayout: abstract, acknowledgements, annotation, answer, appendix, article, bibliodiv, bibliography, bibliolist, blockquote, callout, calloutlist, caption (db.caption), caution, chapter, colophon, constraintdef, cover, danger, dedication, entry, epigraph, example, figure, footnote, glossary, glossdef, glossdiv, glosslist, important, index, indexdiv, informalexample, informalfigure, itemizedlist, legalnotice, listitem, meta (db.meta.content), msgexplan, msgtext, note, orderedlist, para, partintro, preface, procedure, qandadiv, qandaset, question, refsect1, refsect2, refsect3, refsection, refsynopsisdiv, result, revdescription, sect1, sect2, sect3, sect4, sect5, section, setindex, sidebar, simplesect, step, taskprerequisites, taskrelated, tasksummary, td, textobject, th, tip, toc, tocdiv, topic, variablelist, warning.

The following elements occur in literallayout: text, abbrev, accel, acronym, alt, anchor, annotation, application, author, biblioref, buildtarget, citation, citebiblioid, citerefentry, citetitle, classname, co, code, command, computeroutput, constant, coref, database, date, editor, email, emphasis (db._emphasis), emphasis (db.emphasis), enumidentifier, enumname, enumvalue, envar, errorcode, errorname, errortext, errortype, exceptionname, filename, firstterm (db._firstterm), firstterm (db.firstterm), footnote, footnoteref, foreignphrase (db._foreignphrase), foreignphrase (db.foreignphrase), function, glossterm (db._glossterm), glossterm (db.glossterm), guibutton, guiicon, guilabel, guimenu, guimenuitem, guisubmenu, hardware, indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), info (db.titleforbidden.info), initializer, inlineequation, inlinemediaobject, interfacename, jobtitle, keycap, keycode, keycombo, keysym, lineannotation, link, literal, macroname, markup, menuchoice, methodname, modifier, mousebutton, nonterminal, olink, ooclass, ooexception, oointerface, option, optional, org, orgname, package, parameter, person, personname, phrase (db._phrase), phrase (db.phrase), productname, productnumber, prompt, property, quote (db._quote), quote (db.quote), remark, replaceable, returnvalue, revnumber, shortcut, subscript, superscript, symbol, systemitem, tag, templatename, termdef, textobject, token, trademark, type, typedefname, unionname, uri, userinput, varname, wordasword, xref.