No, because a single newline after the closing tag is silently ignored. I propose the following:
<textarea name="fields[<?php echo urlencode($field); ?>]" rows="<?php echo $cfgTextareaRows; ?>" cols="<?php echo $cfgTextareaCols; ?>"
<?php if
(!empty($special_chars)) echo $special_chars . "\n"; ?>
</textarea>
Ok, but I didn't see anywhere in php documentation that trailing newlines are silently ignored. We should also be careful that problems may arise with editors using other end of lines than unix ones (dos' \r\n and mac's \r).
If somebody editing the code with an editor that doesn't preserve end of lines may break it, the code becomes "text editor dependant" which is not exactly our goal... :)
Benjamin