conflict

[Schwenk, Jeanie]

We had a large set of files checked into the respository but they had
windows line endings.  One other developer and myself checked out, scripted
the bad line endings away.  In the meantime, prior to commits, a branch was
made.  These files still have the windows line endings because we had not
committed.  Changes have been made down that branch.  

He and I are now trying to merge the branch into the main trunk but the line
endings issue is getting in the way.   If there happens to be a textual
conflict, the conflict file also includes all the white space differences.
In other words, every single line of the file.  If there were only a few
files with this problem, this would not be such a big issue, we could just
live with editing the conflict files but I'm talking about a few hundreds
and they're large.  

Is there a way (when there is a conflict) to have white space ignored during
a merge?

Jeanie