Currently double back-slash must always be escaped (using ~), although they frequently occur in text explaining Windows-usage (all UNC paths, e.g. "
Oudemans\Sys\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat").

I propose to modify the rendering engine so that forced line breaks are only rendered when a double back-slash occurs at the end of a line (before a return/new line character). This rule could be implemented error tolerant, i.e. blanks between double back-slash and end of a line may be ignored and still produce a <br/> element.

Example:

Text1
Text2
~Text3 \\ Text4\\ Text5

-- Gregor Hagedorn - 29. Aug. 2005

I guess I have to withdraw this idea.

Although I would prefer the proposal, because of the current limitations in tables, \\ in the middle is the only way to break a line in a table. Thus \\ only at end, although it would greatly simplify wiki writing and lessen the number of escape tildes necessary, would break compatibility.

-- Gregor Hagedorn - 2005-9-7