separating blockquotes (repost)

[John Gruber]

Már Örlygsson <mar at anomy.net> wrote on 04/05/04 at 5:54p:

> I want to use Markdown to write two seperate blockquotes one after the
> other like this:
> 
>     <blockquote>"This is the first quotation."</blockquote>
>     <blockquote>"This is another, seperate, quotation."</blockquote>
> 
> When I attempt to do this in Markdown, I seperate the two `>` blocks 
> with an empty line - like this:
> 
>     > "This is the first quotation."
> 
>     > "This is another, seperate, quotation."
> 
> However, instead of two blockquotes, I get one blockquote with two `<p>` 
> paragraphs inside it - like this:

Feature, not a bug, but I'm open to changing this.

The idea behind the current behavior is that one can be lazy, and
simply put a `>` at the start of each paragraph of a blockquote. My
guess is that in most cases, for example input like yours above, the
writer *does* intend for the two paragraphs to be considered part of
one blockquote.

On the other hand, however, I agree that one ought to be able to
create two consecutive blockquotes in Markdown.

I'll have to think about this. Perhaps it can be as simple as only
allowing a single blank line within a blockquote, so that you could
do this:

    > "This is the first quotation."


    > "This is another, seperate, quotation."

to make two one-paragraph blockquotes.

My instinct is that it'd be wrong to require `>` on the blank lines
within a blockquote.

The other possible solution would be to wait until Markdown supports
cite attributes for blockquotes:

    <http://example.com/1/>:
    > "This is the first quotation."

    <http://example.com/2/>:
    > "This is another, seperate, quotation."

-J.G.