I think this was a failure on behalf of early terminal emulator developers. End-of-field and end-of-record should have been supported by the tty (either as visual symbols or via some sort of physical distancing, etc even if portrayed just as a space and a new line respectively) so that the semantic definition could have been preserved/distinguished.
TTYs in general are some of the most outdated and archiac pieces of technology still used today. They need a serious overhaul, but the problem is, any major change will break pretty much all programs.
