Re: Supporting real paragraphs by default

[fantasai]

Joe Francis wrote:
> Mail Compose is used much more by NS6 and mozilla users, so we
> concentrated on getting the behavior right for these folks.  These folks
> expect a single return press to correspond to a single new line.  They
> also expect to be able to click on any empty line and begin typing
> there.  Neither of these goals are compatible with using paragraphs by
> default.

The only obstacle here is your default stylesheet.
Supposing you put this in a <style> element for every new document:

p {
  text-indent: 2em;
  margin: 0;
}

A single return press corresponds to a new line, only it's indented
to indicate a paragraph--which in the vast majority of cases, it is.
There are no "empty lines" for users to click on and begin typing.
Shift-return inserts a soft break (<br>).

When a user inserts an empty paragraph (two return presses), you
can put &nbsp; in it to keep it from collapsing and hold the place.
Later on you might make the editor intelligent enough to detect
section breaks.