How to handle special characters?

[patr...@openbase.com]

Hi, I need to display in a pdf file some text that contains different type of characters: some are ascii type but other are special ones like the 'star' or 'square' characters. I understand from what I have read that those special characters are not available in the default Helvetica or Courier base font and that I need to use the ZapfDingbats font. So what I need to achieve is transform the following XML content: "Some text ★ More text" Into: <fo:inline font-family="Helvetica"> Some text <fo:inline font-family="ZapfDingbats">★</fo:inline> More text </fo:inline> How can this be done using XSL to create the proper FO document knowing that I don't know in advance what the text to translate looks like and how many 'special' characters it contains (ex 'asdf★as■df★as▲d●◆fasd★') Thanks for any tips! Patrick