convert an attribute's value to a text node?

Hi, I am in the process of converting my heavy uses of Saxon and it's
extensions to more standard XSLT 2.0 + XPath 2.0 and here is the one
problem I have left:

I need to convert a string to a text-node. More specifically, I need
to convert the value of an attribute to a text-node, because I have
special templates that expect text-nodes.

Note that saxon's implementation of exsl:node-set would not allow a
string argument, but saxon:node-set would, and would do exactly what
I needed.

Now Michael has removed saxon:node-set from Saxon 7 because this
RTF-madness ;-) is basically cleared now (THANKS for THAT!) But,
my little corner-use-case seems to be unhandled unless I am missing
something (which is likely.)

Thanks for any ideas!
-Gunther

--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org