JSF encoding problem with Russian

Question

Hi,
I am new to JSF, trying to build prototype i18n JSF app with MyFaces 1.1.5
Mostly care about IE6/7, do not officially support other browsers.
I do have resource bundles, it is localized and internationalized.
So user is supposed to work in either English or Russian.
It all works except a few issues:
1) When user enters something in Russian in inputText field on the first page,
trying to pass it to the next page via managed bean.
But instead of showing it in Russian, it shows some garbled text in outputText or outputLabel: Îëåã
FF3 & Chrome show it as: Олег [&#xxxx, where xxxx us a 4 digits]
It does pick up labels from correct bundle on the next page, so locale is changed correctly.
Actually, when I switch locale on the same first page, getting the same problem (after it's refreshed).
Seems to work OK with Spanish
Is that incorrect Cyrillic encoding, JSF encoding or broken Unicode or locale?
How can we fix that ?
Less important issues:
2) When we switch locale (correct values in bundles), on the screen it can not change currencyCode, currencySymbol, TimeZone,
it always shows the first one it picked, although dateTime and Number formatting changes correctly;
3) In IE6 "alt" tag attribute produces garbled characters in Russian (black vertical squares), looks like IE6 bug; FF3 & Chrome work fine.
Please help !
TIA,
Oleg.

Answer 1

For 1, you are not passing the characters in the correct encoding from one page to the next when you pass the parameter (most likely).