RE: UTF-8 to ASCII encoding problem

> On the Windows platform this works fine, but on the Linux platform, it
> generates the sequence EF BF BD which I think represent the 
> fact that it
> couldn't recognize the pound sign.

No, this looks to me like a byte-order-mark encoded in UTF-8. 

There's a lot of confusion about whether BOMs at the start of a UTF-8 file
are allowed or not, but the sad reality is that some system produce them,
others don't, some recognize them, others don't.

XSLT 2.0 gives you control in xsl:output as to whether to output a BOM or
not.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/