formatting plain text to html

[david.maslen at iname.com]

In summary I am looking for a process to format plain text to a
suitable html output.

I have a bunch of plain text notes. I want to format them so that any
URL references ie. 'http://www.python.org/' are replaced by 
'<a href="http://www.python.org/">http://www.python.org/</a>' 

There are probably a few other niceties such as replacing linefeeds
with <p>, but that isn't so important.

Should I just get started with the strings and re modules? Or is there 
some code in existance that will make this task easier?