Yeah, respecting literal line breaks would break some things, but simply replacing the two spaces at the end of a line with something visible (maybe two underscores if that doesn't break something else) should work.
Re:The Markdown Mindset
by fiddlosopher on Saturday February 25, 2012 @10:29PM
(#3634696)
Pandoc's extended markdown allows you to use a backslash at the end of the line to indicate a line break. (Think of this as a backslash-escaped newline, if you want.)
Markdown's default behavior of disregarding line breaks has two benefits: (1) you can keep your lines short without breaking paragraphs apart, and (2) putting each sentence (or long clause) in its own line plays very nicely with version control systems.