Change paragraph font and background color

Question

I'm submitting a project that involves blocks of code.

I figured a nice way to present it by be that paragraphs of code are black text on a light gray background, in courier font.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to create an environment, called "code" for example, such that,

\begin{code}
...
...
\end{code}

would have the gray background, and be in courier font.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

To use the courier font use,

 \renewcommand\ttdefault{pcr}

To define a code environment you can use the listings package.

 \documentclass{book}
%\usepackage[scaled=O.85]{luximono}
\usepackage{xcolor,listings}
\definecolor{theblue} {rgb}{0.02,0.04,0.48}
\definecolor{thered}  {rgb}{0.65,0.04,0.07}
\definecolor{thegreen}{rgb}{0.06,0.44,0.08}
\definecolor{thegrey} {gray}{0.5}
\definecolor{theshade}{gray}{0.94}
\definecolor{theframe}{gray}{0.75}

\renewcommand\ttdefault{pcr}

\lstloadlanguages{[LaTeX]TeX, [primitive]TeX}

\lstnewenvironment{code}[1][]
  {\lstset{language=[LaTeX]TeX}\lstset{%
      escapeinside={{(*@}{@*)}},
      breaklines=true,
      framesep=5pt,
      basicstyle=\ttfamily,
      showstringspaces=false,
      keywordstyle=\ttfamily\textcolor{thegreen},
      stringstyle=\color{orange},
       commentstyle=\color{black},
       rulecolor=\color{gray!10},
      breakatwhitespace=true,
      showspaces=false,  % shows spacing symbol
       xleftmargin=0pt,
       xrightmargin=5pt,
       aboveskip=0pt, % compact the code looks ugly in type
       belowskip=0pt,  % user responsible to insert any skips
      backgroundcolor=\color{gray!15}, #1
}}
{}

\begin{document}
\begin{code}
\let a=2+3
\end{code}
\end{document}