I have the follwing setup which works fine:

----------------
search.jsp
----------------
<%@ page language="java" errorPage="error.jsp" %>
...
<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" %>
<%@ page pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%
String search_string = request.getParameter("search_string");
System.out.println("search.jsp: search_string = "+search_string);
%>
...
<html:form action="search.do" enctype="text/plain;charset=UTF-8" >
...
Search:
...
</html:form>
-------------------

but when I do the following (call my search.jsp from another jsp)
----------------
preconfsearch.jsp
----------------
<%@ page language="java" errorPage="error.jsp" %>
...
<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" %>
<%@ page pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%
String search_string = request.getParameter("search_string");
System.out.println("preconfsearch.jsp: search_string = "+search_string);
%>
...
<jsp:include page="search.jsp">
<jsp:param name="search_string" value="<%=search_string%>"/>
</jsp:include>
-------------------

I have some encoding problems:
preconfsearch.jsp: search_string = câble
search.jsp: search_string = câble
with:
RESPONSE character encoding= ISO-8859-1
REQUEST character encoding= null
JVM encoding UTF-8

then I tried to add a "set Encoding Filter" as follows:
----------------
web.xml
----------------
...

<filter-name>Set Character Encoding</filter-name>
<filter-class>filters.SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>encoding</param-name>
<param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
</init-param>

<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>Set Character Encoding</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
...
----------------

but then I get:
preconfsearch.jsp: search_string = câble
search.jsp: search_string = c?ble

with:
RESPONSE character encoding= ISO-8859-1
REQUEST character encoding= UTF-8
JVM encoding UTF-8

why is this happening and why is my response encoding not set to UTF-8?

thank you for your help,

-Eric

p.s. By the way, I am using a postgres DB with a buch of accented characters and have no problem rendering them... (my db is initialized with UTF-8 as well)