XSL output method text including whitespaces in xsl

Question

I am creating some xsl to transform my xml into text (which will be csv eventually). I am using VS2008. When I use the editor to create the xsl, the transformed output is

Answer 1

You can use the xsl:strip element to declare which elements should not have whitespace (or use * for all elements):

The counter part is xsl:preserve, which allows you to declare which elements should have whitespace preserved. You could use both: