Thanks. I searched everywhere for the unicode/hex for VT -- couldn't find it.
I used your example and it seems to work OK.
I pasted the results into Google Docs, and it looks OK.
But since I don't know what the effect or purpose is, I don't know if the results are correct.
If I'm understanding your question correctly, the purpose of soft return is to move to a new line, but not create a new paragraph, which is treated by most word processors differently. For example, you may want to specify a different space after or before a paragraph that is not just an extra line in between (important formatting control for readability if you are publishing online or especially print). If you are using ordered or unordered lists, you may want to move to a new line without creating a new list item. It's not unlike having proper spacing after a period using variable-width fonts vs. requiring two spaces because readability requires it with monospaced fonts in prose