> What I think you want is

<xsl:attribute name="value">
  <xsl:text>&lt;item&gt;</xsl:text>
  <xsl:for-each select="*">
  <xsl:text>&lt;</xsl:text>
	<xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
  <xsl:text>&gt;</xsl:text>
	<xsl:value-of select="."/>
  <xsl:text>&lt;/</xsl:text>
	<xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
  <xsl:text>&gt;</xsl:text>
  </xsl:for-each>
  <xsl:text>&lt;/item&gt;</xsl:text>
</xsl:attribute>

That's what I need, but MSXSL (correctly, I guess :-))) automatically
escapes everything inside the <xsl:attribute>, even if you add
"disable-output-escaping='yes'" to each <xsl:text> element.

For those who will need something similar in the future (putting XML in HTML
hidden form fields), here is the only solution I found. It's really very far
from elegance, but it works on both MSXSL and Xalan, so I guess it's not
non-standard (and it doesn't require extension functions):

(copies a "item" node with subnodes into a hidden field)

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;input type=&quot;hidden&quot;
name=&quot;_desc_</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="id"/>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&quot; value=&quot;</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;item&gt;</xsl:text>
<xsl:for-each select="*">
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&gt;</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;/</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&gt;</xsl:text>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;/item&gt;</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&quot;&gt;</xsl:text>

L.

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list