percent-encoded URLs are mangled by Google Earth

Question

In a KML file for Google Earth consumption I am using Google Charts dynamic icons whose URLs contain percent-encode characters, e.g., this one. As can be seen by intercepting ne

Answer 1

I came back to this after a long lull and found the answer. Even though you are inserting an URL and thus URL encoding guidelines should apply KML expects special entities to be Unicode- and not URL-encoded even in URLs! In other words you need this:

<href>http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chst=d_map_pin_letter_withshadow&#x26;chld=&#x2022;|cccccc|000000</href>

In retrospect the fact that that it requires "" for the ampersand should have put me on the right track but hindsight is always 20/20...