Not sure what you mean with getting space in the sandbox. When I was young I just made space. ;-)) Anyway, I just tried to compile the test code and it failed on MSVC 7.1 . Is that a known issue? c:\boost\boost\xml\dom\node.hpp(40) : error C2063: 'boost::xml::dom::detail::factory' : not a function c:\boost\boost\xml\dom\node.hpp(54) : see reference to class template instantiation 'boost::xml::dom::node<S>' being compiled c:\boost\boost\xml\dom\node.hpp(51) : error C2942: 'boost::xml::dom::node<S>' : template-class-id redefined as a formal argument of a function c:\boost\boost\xml\dom\attribute.hpp(18) : error C2063: 'boost::xml::dom::detail::factory' : not a function c:\boost\boost\xml\dom\attribute.hpp(27) : see reference to class template instantiation 'boost::xml::dom::attribute<S>' being compiled