PHP and OCI NLS behaviour

Hi, First of all i have searched for this trouble on the news( groups.google.com); on Oracle docson phpbuilder site; in php general, php db mailing list's . The problem: Background info: PHP version: 4.1.2 OS: Linux Suse 7 OCI version: 8 Database version: 7.x Database OS: HP/UX I need to do a select for a field that is varchar2. The field contains strings that have some char's like ( á in html á, ã in html ã). The problem is that instead of these nice char's a get a ?. This seams to me a PHP/OCI probleam, because if a use SQL Plus 8 ( on a Windows machine )or other cliente, i get every thing ok. What a have tried til now: Changing the NLS_LANG env var( with PutEnv in Apache )...no luck. The result for: select * from NLS_SESSION_PARAMETRS is the same on the Windows client and on PHP( i thought that OCI layer was using some defaults of it's own ). The database was created with the right NLS_PARAMETER's ( if it were not, i couldnt get these char's in SQLPLUS ). One more thing....i very new to Oracle....but i have worked with other DBMS like MSSQL Server, MySQL, Postgres. Does any one has seen this before? Is this a known probleam? Does any one have any tip to solve this probleam? Thank's Miguel Carvalho