Why can't I make line breaks in my questions/answers?

Question

When I'm writing something, I naturally use a lot of line breaks. Unfortunately, when I press return once to make a linebreak, it just adds a space. I have to press return again for a break to appear, and even then only a paragraph break appears.

In fact, for demonstrative purposes, in the above paragraph, I used 'linebreaks' instead of spaces:

I realise I can use <br /> to add line breaks, but this soon becomes cumbersome.

Might I request that:

• if this is a bug, please fix it?
• if this is a missing feature, please could it be added?

Answer 1

If you add two spaces after a word and enter a line break/return, the markdown engine will insert a line break automagically. This disables the rewrapping that is designed into the editing system.

So if you enter lines like this, they wrap.

But
if
you
double
space, then they don't wrap.

(click the history link to see my source)

This is documented in the advanced editing help section, which you can get to from any editing frame by clicking the blue circle around the question mark to the right of the edit toolbar.