Converting string to Unicode

["Desilets, Alain" <Alain.Desilets@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>]

I am working on an Emacs mode for programming by voice (i.e. dictating computer code using speech recognition system):

http://voicecode.iit.nrc.ca/

This mode communicates with the speech recognition engine (an application outside of Emacs) through XML messages over socket connections.

In particular, whenever a new character is typed into Emacs, Emacs sends an XML message to the SR system to notify it. This XML message contains the character that was typed as well as the name of the buffer and the position where it was typed.

Whenever I typed an accented character in Emacs, the XML message that gets generated turns out to be malformed, because the character that was typed is inserted into the XML message as a byte sequence that uses the original encoding of that character in the buffer, as opposed to the unicode encoding that the XML message is supposed to be encoded with.

So my question is this. What would be the easiest way for me to take a character that was inserted into an Emacs buffer, and turn it into a unicode character to be inserted in the XML message?

Thx

Alain Désilets, MASc 
Agent de recherches/Research Officer 
Institut de technologie de l'information du CNRC / 
NRC Institute for Information Technology 

alain.desilets@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca 
Tél/Tel (613) 990-2813 
Facsimile/télécopieur: (613) 952-7151 

Conseil national de recherches Canada, M50, 1200 chemin Montréal, 
Ottawa (Ontario) K1A 0R6 
National Research Council Canada, M50, 1200 Montreal Rd., Ottawa, ON 
K1A 0R6 

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