special char in html textarea using xsl?

I am trying to apply an xsl stylesheet to an xml document that places text
within a textarea field of a form.  This
  text comes from several xml tags and I need to put a linefeed in between
each batch of text.  So far everything I
  try such as '\n' shows up in the textarea as '\n' 

  Assigning '\n' to an xsl variable doesn't do it.  I've also tried
assigning the value to a variable in javascript but
  am not having much luck.  I can't seem to call the javascript function
from within the xsl.

  Does anyone have any suggestions? 

  TIA, 
  Sylvia 

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