> Unfortunately, your suggested scheme has a big drawback. If you want to walk
> past one or more multi-line entries in the minibuffer history, you will need to
> press UP once per line of the entries, not once per entry.

The same happens in any "normal" buffer, right?

Not really, in a normal buffer you have a lot of more navigation power, like scrolling page by page, clicking at the right spot etc. When stepping in the minibuffer history, (almost) the only thing you can do is to press UP.

Of course, I would count this as a minor drawback, not as a showstopper.

    -- Anders