SSI problems

System: Apache 1.3.20 (Windows)
Page is in xhtml1.0, charset:ISO-8859-1 or in UTF-8
(same result in both charsets).

I use the following commands to insert a link on a page:
<!--#set var="titles" value="Test:åäö" -->
<!--#set var="t1" value='<a target="_blank" href="/cgi-bin/script.cgi?titles=${titles}&page=${page}">Teståäö</a>' -->
<!--#echo encoding="none" var="t1" -->

Gives this result:
<a target="_blank" href="/cgi-bin/script.cgi?titles=test:åäö&page=page">Teståäö</a>
the entity encoding (&xxxx disappears.

But I would like the following:
<a target="_blank" href="/cgi-bin/script.cgi?titles=test:åäö&page=page">Teståäö</a>
with the entity encoding still in place.

If I use #echo encoding="entity", the text isn't interpreted as html code, I just get plain text (still without entity codes).

What is happening and how can I make this work the way I want to?
Any help is appreciated.

Best regards,

Your value="Test:åäö" -->, I am seeing some garbage after Test:. And you need to know the encoding is done on client side, not server side. That said, you can't tell CGI to process what charset you put, unless it's done on client side. So you should look for SSI alternative.