For example, this:
<p>hi</p>
**Hi**
In the example above, the first line starts an HTML block, so the second line is not bold.
I can see at least a couple of reasons for not starting an HTML block when the starting tag is closed/self-closed on the same line:
- No other popular markdown implementation behaves this way (GitHub, Stackoverflow, Discourse, etc), so this is confusing to the users.
- It makes writing plugins that pre-process Markdown harder. E.g. if the plugin replaces all imgur/youtube links with images/videos, the plugin needs to account for whether empty lines should be added around it depending on the type of the tag inserted and on whether the link is in the beginning of the line.
Why does the spec mandate this? Let’s change it?
Here is a more complete example for what I think the spec should result in:
<p>**Not processed**</p>
**Processed**
<div/>
**Processed**
<div/> **Processed?**
**Processed**