Hi Morgan,

Thanks for writing about this. This behavior is deliberate.

The reason why FeedWordPress does this is because of an unfortunate feature of the Visual Editor -- even though it is capable of understanding posts in full, ready-to-display HTML, it actually strips out a great deal of HTML when you save posts in it -- on the assumption that paragraph breaks will be restored by WordPress's built-in formatting filters. However, since FeedWordPress stores syndicated posts in full, ready-to-display HTML, and deliberately bypasses WordPress's formatting filters for syndicated posts, this causes an issue where any syndicated posts that are edited in the Visual Editor will usually show up with all their line-breaks and paragraph breaks seemingly stripped out. This was frequently reported as a bug by FWP users in earlier releases, so in order to avoid the possible bad interaction, I simply disabled the Visual Editor for syndicated posts (since it deals so poorly with them in general).

If it's important to you to get the Visual Editor back, I think I can actually work out a quick compromise solution, which will enable the Visual Editor for syndicated posts if and only if you have FeedWordPress set up to expose syndicated posts to formatting filters, rather than bypassing formatting filters as it normally does. If you have that setting turned on, then the effects that Visual Editor has on syndicated posts' HTML should not cause the harmful results that were seen when it is turned off. Does that sound like something that would work better for you? If so, let me know, and I'd be happy to drop a note onto this thread when the compromise fix is ready.

Cheers,
-C

Thanks for the alert on this issue. It's a compatibility issue with the admin UI code in WordPress 3.5. I am already working on a fix and should hopefully have a compatibility fix release of FWP ready sometime around the end of the day. I'll post another note here when it's ready.

To-day at Fair Use Repository: G. E. Lind vs. Ross Winn on “Anarchism Exploded,” from FREE SOCIETY, Feb. 16, 1902.

Lind: “Anarchism declares war on the State, which is just as nonsensical as the Democrats ‘smashing the trusts,’ etc. Socialism would not smash the trusts or declare war on the State, but will absorb the State, and by so doing will absorb the trusts…”

Winn: “By establishing the most gigantic trust conceivable—a State monopoly. It is not the forms of monopoly that are evil; but its essence—the principle that abrogates liberty—that sets bounds upon the play of social activity.”

Lind: “… and all the instruments of production and distribution, the result of which would be the abolition of economic classes and consequently the abolition of the oppressive capitalistic State, and the inauguration of the cooperative commonwealth.”

Winn: “But your cooperative commonwealth, administered by State officials, will have society divided into two classes—the workers and the governmental directors of industries. The State ‘boss’ with unlimited power, will constitute a class, and consequently the cooperative commonwealth will not abolish ‘the class struggle.'”

“Anarchism Exploded”

is listening to Maybe California and packing up 12 Market Anarchy and Anarchist Classics orders. Thanks to referrals by Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS), Anarchy is coming soon to Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, Colorado, Memphis, Eugene OR, Henderson NV, San Jose CA, Illinois, Honolulu, Windsor Ontario, and Bilbao País Vasco.

is looking for new dwellings in Auburn starting sometime around August. (Our landlord seems to believe that the ill-maintained 3BR apartment we’re in is worth $100/month more than it was when we moved in. I am not sure that I agree.)

is listening to fado and re-styling WordPress widgets