asterisk users - Aug 2004 - Stripping characters from SIP dial strings

I'm having problems in dialing numbers over SIP that include characters from
the UK international phone number conventions.

I have my contacts in Outlook, with the numbers represented as:

	+<countrycode> (<area code>) <numberpart> <numberpart>

eg:
	+44 (20) 7834 1234

or:
	+1 (801) 555 1234

I'm using the SJphone softphone, doing my testing through the Stanaphone
SIP/PSTN gateway, and have Asterisk in the middle working fine for
everything else.

SJphone can pick up the numbers from Outlook, and send them to Asterisk, but
Asterisk is finding that Stanaphone is barfing on any number that includes a
space or a ( or ).

If I manually enter the number without spaces or parentheses, it's fine.

The following questions arise:
-	Are these characters allowed in a SIP URI?
-	If so, is this an Asterisk problem, a Stanaphone problem, or an SJphone
problem?
-	How can I simply strip out spaces or parentheses from a dialed extension
string?

Thanks

--
David Gurr
Congruity Ltd.
Hemel Hempstead, UK