title: Why doesn't &lt; convert to < while &gt; and other escape characters convert appropriately
body: <p>I send a soap request through SoapUI and use <code>XSLT</code> to generate an <code>XML</code> response back. My response needs to look like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"&gt;
  &lt;soap:Body&gt;
    &lt;TXLifeResponse&gt;         
       &lt;TransType tc="1201"&gt;General Requirement Order Request&lt;/TransType&gt;
    &lt;/TXLifeResponse&gt;
   &lt;/soap:Body&gt;
  &lt;/soap:Envelope&gt; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am able to get this response from the below <code>XSLT</code></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
       xmlns:acord="http://ACORD.org/Standards/Life/2"  
       xmlns="http://ACORD.org/Standards/Life/2"&gt;
    &lt;xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes" /&gt;
    &lt;xsl:variable name="TransType_tc" select="//acord:TXLife/acord:TXLifeRequest//acord:TransType/@tc" /&gt;
    &lt;xsl:variable name="TransType" select="//acord:TXLife/acord:TXLifeRequest//acord:TransType" /&gt;
  
    &lt;xsl:template match="/"&gt;       
           &lt;TXLifeResponse&gt;       
            &lt;xsl:element name="TransType"&gt;
              &lt;xsl:attribute name="tc"&gt;&lt;xsl:value-of select="$TransType_tc"/&gt;&lt;/xsl:attribute&gt;
              &lt;xsl:value-of select="$TransType"/&gt;
            &lt;/xsl:element&gt;
          &lt;/TXLifeResponse&gt;
    &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
  &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but I noticed an unexpected behavior. Before using <code>&lt;xsl:element</code> and <code>&lt;xsl:attribute&gt;</code> tag, I did something like this in <code>XSLT</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&amp;lt;TransType tc=&amp;quot;&lt;xsl:value-of select="$TransType_tc"/&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&lt;xsl:value-of select="$TransType"/&gt; &amp;lt;/TransType&amp;gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and the output received in <code>SoapUI</code> was:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&amp;lt;TransType tc="1201"&gt;General Requirement Order Request &amp;lt;/TransType&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can anyone help me in understanding why <code>&amp;lt;</code> was not converted but<code>&amp;gt;</code> and <code>&amp;quot;</code> did.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>