cpp xerces-c is a C++ library specializing in XML parsing. It is released by the Apache Foundation Use iconv as message loader and transcoder (in general it would be possible to use iconv only as message loader and something else like icu or the native method as transcoder and vice-versa, but this is a less common case and hard to handle). Use ICU as message loader and transcoder. ICU supports over 180 different encodings and/or locale specific message support. Use the libwww library for fetching URLs, instead of the builtin method. Enable threading support through pthread (or other libraries on AIX, IRIX, HPUX, Solars). Highly recommended.