The system I have in mind has volunteers of all sorts of computer literacy levels entering data. I'd rather teach them a few bits of Wiki format to do exceptional things than to teach them HTML to do normal things.

Consider writing plain paragraphs separated by blank lines. (That's very easy to explain; it takes one sentence and people can remember it.)

In the system that expects input in HTML, all paragraphs will run together. You could add logic to turn two newlines into paragraph tags, but that's a heuristic so it'll fail in odd ways sometimes, especially if the user has already added HTML.

In the system that expects Wiki formatting, those paragraphs turn into actual paragraphs, as if the user had used the formatting deliberately.

In reply to Re^3: [Home Work]: Using (subset of) HTML as publishing language at PerlMonks: bug or feature? by chromatic
in thread [Home Work]: Using (subset of) HTML as publishing language at PerlMonks: bug or feature? by monsieur_champs

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.