I’m a recent convert to both Drafts and Markdown and a regular user of Google Docs. I have tried writing text in Markdown within Drafts and saving/exporting to Google Drive. Text formatting (bold, italic, etc) is preserved but line spacing isn’t. In other words, the blank lines between paragraphs disappear, creating one block of text. I have experimented in vain with creating paragraph breaks. What am I doing wrong?
I don’t think they are being ignored. It’s a matter in which Markdown is converted to HTML, and how that translates for formatting in a rich text document. When Markdown is converted to HTML, two line feeds get converted to an HTML paragraph (wrapped in<p></p> tags).
A paragraph in the default style in Google Docs does not have any additional spacing between them. In your Google Doc, you can select Format > Line Spacing > Add space below paragraphs and you’ll see it spaces them.
I think you are hoping for a blank paragraph to be inserted, but that won’t happen in a standard Markdown conversion, and it is likely not what you really want formatting wise. If it is, there are ways via script you could add those blank paragraphs after Markdown conversion, but before sending to Google Docs.