The Advanced Tools Module imposes no internal character encoding requirements or restrictions. Streams may be built in any character encoding. This means that you do not need to convert your characters or data in or out of any particular encoding to use the classes in the Advanced Tools Module.

You do, however, need to assess whether or not you’ll need to build and link the Internationalization Module, based on the character encoding of your streams.

This section provides an overview to help you evaluate your character encoding requirements.