Should the plain text filter convert line breaks into p and div elements?

Question

I have a plain text field in a content type. When I hit return between paragraphs the line breaks are there and show inside of firebug when I inspect the code. However, the body on the view page doesn't render any line breaks. I looked at the plain text input filter and the convert line breaks filter is checked. When I change to filtered html in the settings form of the body widget it works fine.

Do have to use the filtered HTML setting to get the line breaks converted?

Answer 1

When you select "Plain text," you are not setting the field to use the "Plain Text" input format; you are setting the field to change the entered text into plain text.

text_field_formatter_view(), the function that outputs the content of a text field, executes the following code, when the field is set to be shown as plain text:

case 'text_plain':
  foreach ($items as $delta => $item) {
    $element[$delta] = array('#markup' => strip_tags($item['value']));
  }
  break;

As you see, the text is passed to strip_tags(), which doesn't convert new-line characters in <p> or <div> tags.

Answer 2

The answer to your question is no, it should not.

But I always want it to and so do my users. For textareas that do not require "fancy" formatting, we have still always wanted line breaks to carry over into the display.

I use this in my theme's template.php to add them to plain_text textarea fields:

/**
 * Implements template_preprocess_field().
 */
function THEMENAME_preprocess_field(&$vars, $hook) {
  // Add line breaks to plain text textareas.
  if (
    // Make sure this is a text_long field type.
    $vars['element']['#field_type'] == 'text_long'
    // Check that the field's format is set to null, which equates to plain_text.
    && $vars['element']['#items'][0]['format'] == null
  ) {
    $vars['items'][0]['#markup'] = nl2br($vars['items'][0]['#markup']);
  }
}