line breaks in table syntax

It would be nice to put line breaks in the table format, but these line breaks wouldn't show up in the rendered page. Perhaps this can be done with the following syntax: The last character on the line is a single \ and there are non-special chars directly before it. For example

|cell 1,1| cell 2,1\
|cell 3,1|
|cell 1,2| cell 2,2\
|cell 3,2|

This would be rendered as a 2 row 3 column table. Putting line breaks in the table definition is nice if I'm trying to get the definition cells to line up.

I suppose this is a general need for all of the syntax. Because line breaks mean something to the renderer would be nice to be able to escape them.