javascript, xsl and xml

Please help,


I have a child window and am looking to pass some of the xml within it
to it's parent. 
The problem is: any '<' '>' or '"' contained within the xml (as there
will be) causes the javascript function call to fail.

Is there anyway in a stylesheet to pass xml into a function without the
contents of the xml causing problems? Do I need to convert every < to
&lt; < to &gt; etc - if so is there a quick way to do this?

Thanks in advance