Thanks for the tips.

the &#xxx; chars are here to stay it seems, without an easy way to convert them into browser readble %xx (eg. "é" -> "%E9")

I have tried your suggestions already. ISO vs. UTF or output method doesn't change the output in any way, unfortunately. :(

The data gets read out of a DB where the names are stored binary (I think)

here a part of the script:

---snip---

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output method="html"/>

<xsl:param name="pageheight">200</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="pagewidth">400</xsl:param>

<!-- this template replaces the newlines in the text parameter with <br/>
     and outputs the parameter -->
<xsl:template name="break">
 <xsl:param name="text" select="."/>
 <xsl:choose>
   <xsl:when test="contains($text, '&#13;&#10;')">
     <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="substring-before($text, '&#13;&#10;')"/>
     <br/>
     <xsl:call-template name="break">
       <xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text,'&#13;&#10;')"/>
     </xsl:call-template>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:otherwise>                       
           <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="$text"/>
   </xsl:otherwise>
 </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
.
.
.
  <th align="left"><xsl:value-of select="/movieinfo/moviemetadata/field[@name='Actor']/@label"/></th>
...
<xsl:for-each select="cast/star">
                     <tr>
                       <td nowrap="nowrap" class="value"><a href="http://us.imdb.com/Name?{person/lastname},+{person/firstname}"><xsl:apply-templates select="person"/></a></td>
                       <xsl:if test="character!=''">
                         <td class="value"><i><xsl:value-of select="character"/></i></td>
                       </xsl:if>
                     </tr>
                   </xsl:for-each>

---snip---

would it be possible to just use "substring-after" used in teh "break" template for all occurances of accented (&#xxx;) characters?
Thanks

Alex.