I don't think there is anything wrong with requiring only whitespace between an ending if tag and an associated else tag. I wonder if Reuven would provide a real world example where including
text between if/else would be a good idea. The else tag is simply a way of extending the if tag, it is really one unit. If you need two separate conditionals, use two if tags.
One annoyance is that pages break in strange ways when you mess up the if/else tags. This can easily happen on a complex page where you remove or add an if/else incorrectly. I think that 'fixing' the current limitation might lead to even more difficult debugging of these mistakes.
