How does one convert an RTF to a string?

Hi,

    I have an RTF like this :

    <xsl:variable name="test">
        <root>
            <child attrib="something">value</child>
        </root>
    </xsl:variable>

    Doing xsl:value-of on $test produced "value" whereas I really want
to be able to get the string :

        <root>
            <child attrib="something">value</child>
        </root>

    How can I do this? Will I have to write an XML serializer in XSL
or is there an easier way?

Thanks.
Kenneth