Newlines when setting svn:ignore from cmdline

Hello everyone, first post...

Setting the svn:ignore property on a directory node requires a newline
between each item. While one way to do this is to use a file argument,
creating a file is not always an elegant or compelling solution. This
value can be set interactively on the command line by putting all the
values within ' marks and typing a return between each. However, I
haven't found a way to effectively script or automate this process.

Step 2 on <http://riquedafreak.blogspot.com/2007/12/spring-cleaning-with-subversion.html
> describes how to set the ignore property for several values on
directories matching a certain pattern. I would like to make this into
a bash alias, but so far my attempts to do so have been fruitless,
since svn propset doesn't do anything intelligent with \n or \r escape
characters. To me, this seems like a dumb restriction.

I've researched a few possibly related existing issues, both of which
deal with auto-props which can be set in user-specific configuration.
(On OS X, this is found in the ~/.subversion/config file.)

Bug #1989 — Make auto-props affect directories
http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1989

Kevin Ballard suggests using \n for newlines and making auto-props
apply to directories. The latest comments on this issue say that it's
unscheduled, but made into a branch of SVN 2 years ago. I would LOVE
to see progress and a resolution on this, since it would also help
solve the problem I'm facing. (In fact, such files in .xcodproj
directories is one of the problems I'm dealing with.)

Bug #2068 — No escaping of separator characters in auto-props
http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2068

This bug relates to the inability to use semicolons within auto-prop
values, since it's a separator. Introducing an escaped newline might
deal with a similar issue or part of the Subversion config system.

Nothing that I've found so far has dealt with accepting escaped
newlines in svn:ignore propset strings. Does anyone else feel that
this is an issue that could stand to be improved?

Thanks,
   - Quinn Taylor