How do I enforce a new paragraph within a need directive?

[jumbo172]

Outside of a need directive, the following text renders like I want it, with each blank line separating the paragraphs:

Here is a paragraph followed by a single blank line.

**Procedure**

Here is another, preceded by a single blank line.

If I do the same inside a need directive, a blank line renders as a line break, not as a blank line to separate the paragraphs:

.. test_case::
    :id: example
    Here is a paragraph that is not followed by a single blank line.

    **Procedure**

    Here is another, that is not preceded by a single blank line.

How do I enforce blank lines to separate paragraphs, to aid readability?

[chrisjsewell]

Heya, it works the same as standard admonitions (like note), so will already do this.
Perhaps it is because you missed the blank line between the option (:id:) and the paragraph; with this I checked and it works fine

[jumbo172]

Hi Chris, thanks for the reply.

Here is my exact code:

.. test_case:: example
   :id: example

   Here is a paragraph that is not followed by a single blank line.

   **Procedure**

   Here is another, that is not preceded by a single blank line.

It renders like this:

What does yours render as?

Sphinx 7.4.7
sphinx-needs 2.1.0
sphinx-rtd-theme 2.0.0

[chrisjsewell]

what does the actual html look like though? are they separate <p>
it is probably just CSS pushing them together

Note there has been changes to CSS in v3.0.0 so I would advise to move to that https://sphinx-needs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#documentation-and-css-styling

[jumbo172]

In the html each line is a separate <p>.

I have upgraded to v3.0.0 but I still see the same behaviour.

Inside an admonition, such as note, the lines are also separate <p>, but blank lines are rendered to separate the paragraphs.

[chrisjsewell]

In the html each line is a separate <p>.

That would appear to be a CSS issue then.
What theme are you using? can you link to an example page, or use the https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools yourself to see what styling is being applied

[jumbo172]

I'm using sphinx-rtd-theme 2.0.0.

I used the devtools and inspected the formatting.

If I change margin-bottom from its default setting of 0 to 24, the line spacing renders as I would expect it to:

html.writer-html5 .rst-content table.docutils td>p,html.writer-html5 .rst-content table.docutils th>p {
    line-height: 1rem;
    margin-bottom: 24;
    font-size: .9rem
}

We are using a custom CSS, but I cant see anything in it that would be causing the problem.