I think that's overkill, it draws wayyy too much attention. Just use italics for variable and replaceable text, that's the convention used by O'Reilly books and most web sites. (The semantic HTML tag for variable text is <var> — enter your User Name. Note how it's just italic, not italic+bold.)
Surely the <code> tag must extend over all the bits you type in, otherwise it's incoherent. The examples given are wrong.
KDE UserBase Wiki ssh username@domain.name in Konsole
ssh username@domain.name in Konsole
ssh username@domain.name in Konsole
Besides, the correct tag for things you must type is the <kbd> tag. From the HTML 2.0 spec at w3.org, "The KBD element indicates text typed by a user." <code> should be for bits of config files, sample output, etc. Let's try kbd:
The steps to get there from here are:
I generally have nothing against that. But...
We have already Parley/Manual that does not even follow the current guidelines. Can anybody be a volunteer and fix everything (well, as the only manual which is more or less up-to-date and complete now, at least Amarok/Manual) on manual pages? 
It would also be good to present some table of correspondence. Ex.:
| Description | Code | Code example | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inline user input | <kbd></kbd> | <kbd>ssh -h</kbd> | ssh -h |
Thanks.
"Only italic for replaceable and variable text" - I dislike the effect of the combination, but then Italic, standing alone, already has a defined role. In my opinion to give it this role as well will cause a great deal of confusion.
"extend code tag to end of entry" - I agree, but if we develop the additional tag there will be no point in starting such edits.
"kbd tag, not code, for user input" - I await Yurchor's comment as to whether, in the long run, this would help or not. I'm happy to go ahead, if he is, but his comment about getting people to follow rules does stand. We have seen a strong argument in the last week or so where a writer saw no reason to obey our rules.
This leaves us, I think, having to choose between discouraging writers or creating a team of editors to mark up every new page, as soon after creation as possible, with standardised markup. That's something of a thankless task, and I'm not even sure that the authors would accept it.
In the long run it does not matter. Most of authors do not care any rules. They choose formatting freely and deliberately even on the pages with "default" formatting.
Re-formatting pages is just a waste of time (imho). Tomorrow someone can dislike something else... If there will be no overlaps we can proceed with any formatting. There are enough editors to fix articles (at least now). And I'd rather revert any inconsistent changes in markup in manuals without having at least a little hope of fixing the whole manual by the particular editor.
The consistent look and feel of manuals is better than inconsistent usage of the best markup ever discovered (imho).
I'm not sure what you're saying. Yes most people don't follow rules, but it can only help to develop the right rules. The more they make sense and are consistent with what people are used to (italics for variables, kbd as the tag for the keyboard input, etc.), the easier they are to follow.
I can live with bold and italic as your variable text rule if changing it will introduce inconsistency within your wiki. But extending the box and using <kbd> make sense, and over time the wiki will improve.
