You seem to be missing the point that PerlMonks posts are HTML-formatted. Converting \n\n into <p> (or whatever) means that's no longer the case. It breaks people's expectations.

Now, if you're proposing that we support — in addition and completely separately — a plain text format, that's a notion worth considering. But plain text is not html. Users would not be able to add any kind of formatting markup on their own.

Personally, I think a much better idea is to support — in addition and completely separately — markdown formatting. (I added an entry in the pmdev to-do wiki for this.)

> completely separately — a plain text format, that's a notion worth considering

Ehm ... what's the expected difference to using <pre> or <code> tags then?

edit

Apart from a different CSS classes maybe.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

what's the expected difference

The user doesn't have to type the <pre>   </pre> tags? :-)

But I think the idea is that if the user selects "plain text" posting mode, then we automatically apply certain transformations for nicety, such as autolinkifying URLs.

I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.

Because that has little—best case—to nothing—what I believe but am open to citations—to do with why HTML was devised.