I have asked this question now several ways, but still have not gotten an answer.
When you capture asci text in a textarea that includes line breaks, it seems to ins
I am not sure to anderstand your question.
If you want to write this in your <textarea/>
first line
second line
You should write this:
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<textarea rows="4" cols="40">
first line
second line
</textarea>
</body>
</html>
In PHP you should write this
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<textarea rows="4" cols="40"><?php echo "first line\r\nsecond line" ?></textarea>
</body>
</html>
Make sure that string is between " and not '
Well if you're doing this through pure HTML, then you can do it one of two ways. Just add lines by pressing enter or using the ASCII characters 
 

jsFiddle
If you are using javascript you can use the textarea element value Property.
var tb = document.getElementById("tb");
var newLine = "\r\n";
var text = "Output: " + newLine + "-------------------" +
newLine + "line 1: " +
newLine + "line 2: ";
tb.value = text;
//console.log(text);
<textarea id="tb" rows=5>
Output: -------------
</textarea>
Run it on JSFiddle