sending Unicode strings that include punctuation to search engines with revGoURL

[Curt Ford]

My app allows users to send a word to a search engine for more  
examples of usage. With help from the list I've gotten it to work  
with languages using the Latin alphabet, Russian, even Hindi..

It does fail, though, when I send a search string in Russian that  
includes any punctuation or space. For example, the search string for  
ой! (a two-letter word followed by an exclamation mark) shows up in  
the engines as http://www.google.com/search?q=%04%1E%049! .

Does anyone have suggestions on how to tweak this so terms like  
'как-то' or 'потому что' can be sent to the search  
engines?

Existing code:

When the user displays a new term, the word to search for is set up  
like this:

on changeWord
global gWord, gWordToSearch

   --use an invisible field so we can check its effectiveTextFont to  
see if it's Unicode
  set the HTMLText of fld "invisibleWordToSearch" to gWord

   set the useUnicode to true

   --if the field contains Unicode text..
   if the effective textFont of word 1 of field  
"invisibleWordToSearch" contains comma then
     --next line works for Russian
     put urlEncode(unidecode(fld "invisibleWordToSearch", utf8)) into  
gWordToSearch
   else
     --next line works for Roman alphabet
     put  fld "invisibleWordToSearch" into gWordToSearch
   end if

end changeWord

The 'search' button has this script:

on mouseUp
   global gWordToSearch

   revGoURL (the cSearchEngine of this stack & gWordToSearch)
end mouseUp


thanks

Curt