Special characters

[Rex Rock]

I have a textarea where users would type in data, the data might include special characters
like the greek characters alpha, beta etc. Since they cannot type in such characters directly
I provide a list of those characters next to the textarea. I dispaly these characters using
HTML, like &_#_913; etc. I further use javascript, to enter those characters into the textarea
when they click on the list of available special characters. Upto this point, I have used HTML
provided special characters to display the list of special characters, and also to enter them
into the textarea. Now, when the form is submitted I have problems reading these characters.
I'm thinking of having a hashmap to to map these HTML special characters to ansi characters, but these
HTML characters don't show up fine when they are submitted. Ex a special character displayed
using &_#_913; doesn't showup as &_#_913; when the form is submitted.
Screaming for help,
If the problem is not clear, please let me know. I'll be more clear.
p.s:
In the message above , I have include underscore purposefully in typing &_#_913; otherwise it would be displayed as " Α "
[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Rex Rock ]

[Brian Glodde]

Hi Rex, Why don't you try posting excerpts of both the incoming data and the code that is not reading it correctly? Then we should be able to properly diagnose the problem without an extended thread.