Removing the forced <p> tags in MovableType posts?

[jec44 at drexel.edu]

Hi all,

I'm sure this is a question that has been asked before, so my apologies for any redundancy.

Basically, whenever you tell MT to use automatic formatting of any sort (including Markdown, unfortunately), MT will place <p> tags around every paragraph of text in your entry.  This is a bad thing for me, as I don't like the preceeding and concluding carriage returns that this leaves in my bog entries.

I asked around for help and was pointed to the html_text_transform procedure in Util.pm -- within that proc are a few lines that read:

       if ($p !~ m/^<(?:table|ol|ul|pre|select|form|blockquote|div|q)/) {
           $p =~ s!\r?\n!<br />\n!g;
           $p = "<p>$p</p>";
       }

I've tried numerous things things with this block of code and it seems to have no effect.  Even if I comment the whole thing out, the <p>'s are still printed around each paragraph.

Is there an easy solution to this?  I really like Markdown a *lot* and would prefer to keep using it.

Thanks,
~jason