Which versions of XML::DOM, XML::Parser and XML::Parser::PerlSAX are you trying to install? There are annoying incompatibilities between various versions, so you have to be quite careful here (and I know those incompatibilities are not really described anywhere, I have to update the review of XML::DOM on this site with the latest release of XML::DOM. My first guess would be that you use a version of XML::Parser that has problems with UTF-8 encoded strings, maybe 2.28 or 2.30, but I might be wrong.

In fact I am not even sure you need XML::Parser::PerlSAX to use XML::DOM, XML::Parser should be enough, so you might be able to ignore .the error and still get XML::DOM to work properly.

<plug type="shameless">If you want to use XML::DOM you might want to have a look at XML::DOM::Twig, a dirty hack that still improves XML::DOM by adding a slightly higher-level interface to the DOM.

A good article on using XML::DOM can be found on IBM DeveloperWorkss. Tony Parungar has been using the DOM for quite a while and gives insightful feedback on how to use it.