Text areas can be multiple lines either through the wrapping of one line over to another, or by the user pressing the enter key. To divide lines based on the enter key, use the Javascript split() function (
http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_split.asp) with separator="\n". Determining line wrap locations is much more difficult, as you'll have to reverse-engineer the line wrapping algorithm, which may be different depending on the browser, to find whitespace locations where wrapping could occur.
Good luck! :)
Jon Emerson
http://www.digg.com/users/panaceaa/profile