i.e. in place of cgi.escape().  Faster
  C-based implementation and also escapes
  single quotes for additional security.
  Supports the __html__ attribute for
  the given expression as well.

  When using "disable_unicode" mode,
  a pure Python HTML escaper function
  is used which also quotes single quotes.

  Note that Pylons by default doesn't
  use Mako's filter - check your
  environment.py file.