I have added a note about this to Wikichip.

As you say, so long as you are aware that you need to strip a trailing $LF, there is no real issue.

P.S. Another oddity is that the text is accessed through $parseline rather than through $1-. It would be nice if it was placed in $1- as well (though if you start your ON PARSELINE with TOKENIZE 32 $LEFT($PARSELINE,-1) you get the same outcome, so this is no big deal either.