[wp-hackers] meaningful EOLs considered harmful

[Matej Cepl]

Hi,

I am trying to build a small system of XSLT stylesheets and 
simple Python script to create a solution for publishing blogs 
originally authored in Docbook 5.0 via Atompub. The current code 
is at http://mcepl.fedorapeople.org/tmp/atom-wordpress/

Everything works well, except for the fact that apparently 
wordpress tries to format XHTML document by the EOLs it finds in 
the Atom feed. So for example result of the command (publishing 
entry available on the fedorapeople)

curl -v -X POST -u login:pass --data-binary @test.atom -c \
    cookies.txt -H 'Content-Type: application/atom+xml' \
    http://matejcepltest.wordpress.com/wp-app.php/posts

where test.atom contains (among many other things and in 
<atom:content type="xhtml">)

    <p>“<span class="scripture">For God sent not his
        Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world
        through him might be saved.</span>” (J. 3:17)  In some 

is on http://matejcepltest.wordpress.com/ and to may horror it 
contains this text as:

    <p>“<span class="scripture">For God sent not his<br />
    Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world<br />
    through him might be saved.</span>” (J. 3:17) 

Aren't EOLs supposed to be meaningless in XHTML? Why then 
wordpress inserts <br /> elements whenever I have EOL in XHTML 
text?

Or did I miss something?

Thank you for any answers,

Matěj

P.S.: Also on http://wordpress.org/support/topic/260218 ... not 
sure where is this more appropriate.