XSL Generating CSV - xslt

Question

Trying to convert this:
<list>
<entry>
<parentFeed>
<feedUrl>http://rss.nzherald.co.nz/rss/xml/nzhrsscid_000000001.xml</feedUrl>
<id>68</id>
</parentFeed>
<content>Schools will have to put up with problematic pay administered through Novopay for another eight weeks after the Government announced it would persist with the unstable system.Minister responsible for Novopay, Steven Joyce, delayed...</content>
<link>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10872300&ref=rss</link>
<title>Novopay: Govt sticks with unstable system</title>
<id>55776</id>
<published class="sql-timestamp">2013-03-19 03:38:55.0</published>
<timestamp>2013-03-19 07:31:16.358 UTC</timestamp>
</entry>
</list>
into this, using XSLT:
Title, Link, Date
Novopay: Govt sticks with unstable system, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10872300&ref=rss, 2013-03-19 03:38:55.0
But try as I might, I can't get rid of the blank line at the beginning of the document. My stylesheet follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:csv="csv:csv"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="text" encoding="UTF-8"/>
<xsl:template match="/list"> <xsl:for-each select="entry">
Title, Link, Date
<xsl:value-of select="title"/>, <xsl:value-of select="link"/>, <xsl:value-of select="published"/>
</xsl:for-each></xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
I've tried putting in <xsl:text>
</xsl:text> as suggested here which stripped the last linebreak, so I moved it to the top of the file, at which point it turned into a no-op. The solution here actually adds a blank line (which makes sense, as the hex code is for newline, according to the ascii manpage).
As a workaround, I've been using Java to generate the CSV output.
However, I do feel XSLT would be a lot faster as it is designed to transform XML to various other formats. A similar XSLT generates HTML, RSS, and ATOM feeds perfectly.

Answer 1

You have done it perfectly, your logic is spot on. However what you need to take in mind, when your outputting text all indents in your XSLT will affect the output so your XSLT should look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:csv="csv:csv"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="text" encoding="UTF-8"/>
<xsl:template match="/list"> <xsl:for-each select="entry">Title, Link, Date
<xsl:value-of select="title"/>, <xsl:value-of select="link"/>, <xsl:value-of select="published"/>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:for-each></xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Run the above XSLT and it will work perfectly.