Re: weird character B , how to make

Anyway to answer your questions,
1. The XSLT processor that I'm using is Xalan, and the
method I use to transform is:
	public synchronized static org.w3c.dom.Document
transform(org.w3c.dom.Document source,
org.w3c.dom.Document stylesheet) {

Well, the DOM document surely must be serialized to appear in
your browser, somewhere? Anyway, using an intermediate DOM
means the XSLT processor wont control the output encoding, and
if there is an xsl:output in your style sheet, it is basically
ignored.
Whatever serializes the DOM, it seems to generate an UTF-8 encoded
stream (the usual default for XML serializers), and it also tells
the browser it is 8859-1 encoded (the usual default for web servers).
Without a look at the code doing the serialization and your server
configuration it is hard to tell how to fix this.

2. does the html include a meta element?
No. should I use one?

The XSLT processor will generate one automatically, for carrying
an encoding declaration as a further hint for the browser (which
may get multiple conflicting advises on the content encoding: in
a HTTP header, an XML declaration and the META tag).
An automaticallyu generated encoding advertisement in a META tag
is often a problem if some other part of the server modifies the
encoding afterwards.