Slashes in custom checkout fields

[julian]

I use Shopsite to handle registrations of attendees for my company's conferences. I am using custom checkout fields to acquire additional information on the registrants (e.g., job title) To merge the orders with my registration database, I download the orders in XML format.

If a customer enters a forward-slash into one of the custom checkout fields (e.g., director, ecommerce / web apps), the XML file gets a bit corrupted, probably because slashes are a part of XML itself.

The work-around that I'm considering is adding some custom JavaScript to do a search/replace on any slashes on the checkout page. Is there another solution? I am using Shopsite 8.0 Pro. Is the issue fixed on v8.1? Are there any other special characters that would mess up the XML? (I am a novice at XML and JavaScript.)

Thank you....Julian