SharePoint XSLT and line breaks in multiline plain-text fields

Sometimes I feel like I'm an archaeologist.
This one must be one of the oldest frequently asked question about XSLT and SharePoint. Just Google for "SharePoint xslt line breaks multiline" and what you'll get is a list of sites basically all suggesting the same thing: a custom XSLT template to convert the carriage return to a <br> element.

The question is: is it really the only way to get line breaks for a multiline plain-text field showed in a DFWP?