Can XSLT be used to form a plain txt file, not just html?

Lately I have become a huge fan of XSL, XPath and XML, but I've only used it to format outputted html documents, with a head and body sections.

I was wondering if its possible to use good of XSLT to format other types of documents, like plain txt?

From stackoverflow

• Yes of course - just use

  <xsl:output method="text" indent="yes"/>
  

  instead of

  <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>
  

  Marc

  UPDATE: whitespace and formatting text exactly as needed are always a bit tricky in XSLT. Check out some of those references:

  • XML.com: controlling whitespace
  • XSL Primer (part 5 has a note about whitespace)
  JL : Thanks Marc, will line breaks occur naturally, same as in the template?

  Pavel Minaev : If you use direct element constructors, whitespace within will be collapsed by the usual rules. `` is space-preserving, and lets you control output at character precision, however.