Yes, it will be configurable -- "the assumption can be turned off."

The question is which the default should be.

Any opinions, especially from users of ruby-marc, or other MARC parsing 
libraries?

On 11/20/13 9:32 AM, Jon Stroop wrote:
> Coming from nowhere on this...is there a place where it would be
> convenient to flag which behavior the user (of the library) wants? I
> think you're correct that most of the time you'd just want to blow
> through it (or replace it), but for the situation where this isn't the
> case, I think the Right Thing to do is raise the exception. I don't
> think you would want to bury it in some assumption made internal to the
> library unless that assumption can be turned off.
>
> -Jon
>
>
> On 11/19/2013 07:51 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>> ruby-marc users, a question.
>>
>> I am working on some Marc8 to UTF-8 conversion for ruby-marc.
>>
>> Sometimes, what appears to be an illegal byte will appear in the Marc8
>> input, and it can not be converted to UTF8.
>>
>> The software will support two alternatives when this happens: 1)
>> Raising an exception. 2) Replacing the illegal byte with a replacement
>> char and/or omitting it.
>>
>> I feel like most of the time, users are going to want #2.  I know
>> that's what I'm going to want nearly all the time.
>>
>> Yet, still, I am feeling uncertain whether that should be the default.
>> Which should be the default behavior, #1 or #2?  If most people most
>> of the time are going to want #2 (is this true?), then should that be
>> the default behavior?   Or should #1 still be the default behavior,
>> because by default bad input should raise, not be silently recovered
>> from, even though most people most of the time won't want that, heh.
>>
>> Jonathan
>
>