add wpautop filter to the_author_description() (and its own filter)

[jeremyclarke]

There is currently no filter on the_author_description(), which prints out author bios within the loop. On the backend you can add html to it, but <br>'s and <p>'s are removed. Line breaks are kept though, just like in the post content, but then on display there is no use of wpautop to make the line breaks actually display (they're just html whitespace).

So we should either add wpautop to the output or stop stripping BR from the content.

Further, it seems like a good idea to add it's own filter in case people want to do special things with author bios.

For bonus points, could we add an optional argument to both functions (get_author_description() and the_author_description()) so that people could call them with filters active from outside the loop, specifically in author.php pages where it makes a lot more sense to show the user bio than inside the loop.

I can write a patch if someone indicates it will be welcome.

[Denis-de-Bernardy]

this can be done with a plugin.