Character replacement script for Site Studio / idocscript

Question

Working on creating and RSS feed of items in our CMS via the RSS feed component in Site Studio. I have the feed generating, but the Google Product search parser that I need to read the feed balks at odd (non-standard) characters like "o-slash" and an accented e. We have many items with foreign-language descriptions or authors from non-English countries that use characters outside of standard English.
I would have thought that using xml(parameter) would have solved this problem, but it does not.
At the moment, I'm "solving" this by individually locating the error and adding a "regexReplaceAll" for each one to change it to a somewhat acceptable alternative. It gets even tougher when, for example, I have to replace for the "o-slash" by using this:
<!--$theAuthor = regexReplaceAll(xCreator, "&#248;", "&#38;#248;")-->
because the server recognizes the o-slash as &#248, but the xml parser (Google Product search's data feed) will accept it only if I also make the ampersand in the entity an entity as well.
My question is... is there an easier way to find and replace for all these potential pitfalls? Is there a idocscript that someone has already written and is willing to share?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Barry
(using Site Studio 10gR4)

Answer 1

Thanks, but <!--$xml(descriptionText)--> doesn't seem to work for this parser (Google products data feed) and/or the characters that are being used.
For example, the output of <!--$xml(descriptionText)--> is this:
"...lleven un método efectivo para medir la satisfacción..."
and the error is this:
"Some of the characters in your items seem to be invalid.
...lleven un método efectivo para medir la satisfacción..."
So the parser is either seeing something different than what I see (even though we're reading the same file) or it just doesn't consider "é" and "ó" to be valid xml (and I have no idea if they are or not).
I have been asking for more guidance on the Google products board, too, but was hoping that there was something else that could be done from Site Studio end.
Thanks!
Barry