Plugin Directory: Single line breaks in readme.txt should be ignored

[yo35]

In plugin description pages, a <br> tag is introduced in the page each time there is a line break in the readme.txt file. This goes against the usual Markdown behavior (see ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example).

[Otto42]

No, line breaks in the readme.txt result in paragraphs, not BR tags.

You need to provide examples of the problem for this to be seen.

[yo35]

Consider this example:

I am a very very long sentence that belongs to a single paragraph but I am split
on several lines in the readme.txt file so that I remains easily readable and
editable in plain text mode.

This would be rendered as follows:

<p>I am a very very long sentence that belongs to a single paragraph but I am split<br/>
on several lines in the readme.txt file so that I remains easily readable and<br/>
editable in plain text mode.</p>

The expected behavior -- according to the usual Markdown behavior -- would be to have it rendered without the two <br/> tags. By "usual Markdown behavior", I mean:

• what is presented on the Markdown Wikipedia page: ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example,
• what is advised on the official Markdown website: ​https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p,
• what is implemented in several websites that use Markdown, including GitHub for instance.

[Ipstenu]

This is expected behavior in WordPress however :) If you wrote that example in WP's Post Editor, it would introduce line breaks.

Single line break == br

Double line break == p

This is not Markdown, it's nearly markdown, and we know that causes some confusion, but expecting full markdown behavior from your readme.txt is going to end badly.

I'm leaning towards a wontfix here since it's a part of the readme parser and being on WP now and not bbPress.

[yo35]

In case of a wontfix, the readme.txt sample file (​https://wordpress.org/plugins/files/2016/06/readme.txt) should be updated, as it heavily uses single line breaks à-la Markdown.

[tellyworth]

Related: #2638

At the very least, we need to make documentation correct and more clear.