An idea … <p> <br />

I don't think that this is a good Idea. People should use <p> wherever they need a new Paragraph. <br> should be avoided, because it is some kind of visual Layout.

The Editor should make the better style the default behaviour. Since there are Situations where <br> has the correct meaning (the following belongs to the same Paragraph but needs a new Line) It should be accessible but not too much straight forward.

I think the behaviour should simply stay the way it is.

rikew, you could do this on the server-side - replace all "<br[ /]+><br[ /]+>" regexps with "</p><p>" (and make sure you're not closing off paragraphs that are not actually opened).

I agree .. paragraphs are better and the correct way to do it.

If you want paragraphs to look like line breaks (no space after), just add this to your style sheet:

p {margin:0; padding:0}

Hear hear, paragraphs are the way to go. I used to absolutely hate that idea for the same reason as the OP: most users actually get confused.

In fact I set up a little test: fck with the font format dropdown only and the <p> behaviour, versus fck with font and text size dropdowns and the <br> behaviour. Guess what? Everybody prefered the non-standard, ugly font tag generation, because it did 'what they wanted it to do'.

However, since I'm trying to push more and more for standard compliance, i had to stick with the former behaviour, and place prominent help messages and tutorial across my app.