Does @smallexample come out as 8pt or so? It definitely looks smaller than 10pt on my screen.
It comes out as whatever your browser tells it to, hopefully depending on what font size you have set. This is why different users see different things. The effect should be similar to using <small>...</small>, although I expect there are browser(s) and version(s) which don't implement any of this properly in the first place. As for using @example instead of @smallexample, I suspect some of the examples would then become too wide for the printed manual. I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything to do here. Every option will displease someone. karl