problem with #&233; characters and such in URL

Hi all,

 

I was hoping to get help with a little problem of mine I am a total noobie so bear with me.

 

I have an xls script where I construct an URL out of a variable like this:

---snip---

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

...

<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---

 

the current linking has a problem with accented Names like
e.g. Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez
the template would make a link like:
"http://us.imdb.com/Name?Guti&#233;rrez,+Zaide Silvia"
which will end up in the browser as:
"http://us.imdb.com/Name?Guti%C3%A9rrez,+Zaide%20Silvia"
which of course will lead to an error.

 

the right link would look like this:
"http://us.imdb.com/Name?Guti%E9rrez,+Zaide+Silvia

 

i tried to solve this via the ENTITY command without luck.

e.g.: <!DOCTYPE person [
<!ENTITY #233 "%E9">
]>

 

well, it would suffice to pass the names without any accents, too, i just don't know how i can do this....

 

can anyone help? only if there's an easy solution...

 

Thanks.

Alex.