[cscheid]

Loose list items rendered by q2 render lose their <p>. A loose list (blank lines between items) is made of Para items, as in Pandoc, but the HTML writer wrote any item with a single block inline. So - a blank - b rendered <li>a</li>, where Pandoc, Quarto 1, and q2 preview produce <li><p>a</p></li>. Loose task lists were affected the same way. Found during the #892 triage (bd-2ydvebkc); strand bd-nnvvomg6.

Changes

• Writer fix (crates/pampa/src/writers/html.rs, write_blocks_inline): only a lone Plain item is written inline. A Para keeps its <p>, which matches Pandoc, since its writer also decides from the block kind alone. Unchanged: tight lists; the \n</li> whitespace after a multi-block item; and a trailing {.class}, which stays hoisted onto the <li>.
• lmd fixture and docs. A {=: … :=} block fragment is a Para, so a list built from one fragment per item is loose. The bug was hiding that. The lmd-blog test fixture and the example in docs/guides/authoring/components.qmd now use pandoc.Plain({=[ … ]=}), as lmd.qmd already recommends for tight lists. lmd.qmd also gains a sentence saying that block-fragment items make a loose list.

The fixture and docs commit comes first, and rendered output doesn't change at that commit. As a result, no snapshot files change in this PR.

User-visible effect

Loose lists now get paragraph spacing between items in q2 render, matching Pandoc and Quarto 1. Loose task items render <li class="task-list-item"><p><label><input …/>…</label></p></li>. The checkbox-hang rule from #1191 already targets li.task-list-item > p:first-child > label > input.

Tests

• New crates/pampa/tests/integration/test_html_list_item_para.rs: loose bullet, loose ordered, a single-Para item in a loose list, tight (unchanged), and a hoisted attr on a loose item.
• test_task_list.rs: a loose task item.
• New crates/quarto/tests/integration/loose_list_render.rs: an end-to-end q2 render test.

Each test except the tight-list guard was written first and failed on main. cargo xtask verify --skip-hub-build passes locally.

End-to-end: I rendered claude-notes/plans/loose-list-item-para-investigation/repro.qmd with q2 render and read the output: loose items render <li><p>…, and tight items render <li>a</li>. I didn't do a visual comparison in a browser.

Plan: claude-notes/plans/2026-11-12-loose-list-item-para.md

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