 Re: What's happening here?
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I think the tags are florfed by the length of the hyperlink. Notice the ellipses in "The same four .dmgs opened with[/i... of opening"—they get introduced by the software when hyperlinks exceed 80 characters of text, it seems. Simple experimentation shows, for example, that dropping "four" from the hyperlinked text The same .dmgs opened with path bar having been selected in advance of openingworks as expected. Your addition of bold tags took your original hyperlink past 80 characters, which introduced the ellipses. Why the software shortens long hyperlinks—presumably it's a "feature"—I don't know. And how exactly the truncation is carried out—where in a hyperlink it occurs, and how many characters are removed—would require more experimentation than I have time for. (You're invited to take a crack at it if you'd like.) That the whole hyperlink-truncating process was introduced without, apparently, regard to what might happen to marked-up hyperlinks, I think we can safely regard as a bug. If you have an account over at UBB Central, you might see if anyone else there has stumbled across it.
dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
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Re: What's happening here?
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I think the tags are florfed by the length of the hyperlink. ...
Please define "florf". I've scoured the Web and cannot find a definition; it's certainly not a technical term.
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Re: What's happening here?
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AFAICT, the place where I first saw the word 'florfed' in the sense of 'messed up' or 'corrupted' etc. was in a mid-1999 MacFixIt Forums post (#132284 *) by erstwhile MFIF moderator Charles Downs. He may not have coined the term, but it is interesting to note that this occurrence predates the Urban Dictionary entry Hal linked to by 7 years. *) FWIW, the full URL of this post last time I successfully searched for it (2002-2003) is listed below. Unfortunately, due to loss of threads and various format/software changes over time, this URL is now no longer valid: http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/showfl...true#Post132284PS, Artie, note the URL truncation?
Last edited by alternaut; 01/29/12 05:29 PM. Reason: Added comment about long links
alternaut ◉ moderator
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Re: What's happening here?
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A case can be made for the term to have had its genesis at the MacFixIt Forums. Googling florfed site:macfixitforums.com yields several dozen hits. Simply googling florfed results in a surpisingly high percentage of hits from Mac-related forums. Supplementing Hal's linked definition are crarko's post ("...a close relative of hosed, whacked, and borked, but not nearly so bad as fubar'd...") and my followup ("If you burnt the omelet, you have merely ruined it; if you folded it neatly out of the pan and on to the burner...you've truly florfed it") from this 2004 MFIF thread. (In my post, I credited long-dormant MFIFer arendsj for popularizing the term, if not coining it.)
Last edited by dkmarsh; 01/29/12 06:08 PM. Reason: added italics
dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
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Re: What's happening here?
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Now um... please define "scoured". I went to TechTerms; unknown there. I googled the term (ie, "define: florf") and all I saw on the first couple of pages was stuff like: Spore Creature Florf - YouTube, florf (florf) on BuzzFeed, florf on Vimeo, Photo: carm florf | My Family Restoration project album, and so on. I did not get a "surp[r]isingly high percentage of hits from Mac-related forums"; perhaps I should have googled "florfed". I didn't try Urban Dictionary because I assumed it to be computerese and don't normally associate UD with such.
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Re: What's happening here?
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... perhaps I should have googled "florfed". It certainly looks that way. I must confess that I myself tend to search for roots of words, assuming that this returns all (or at least several) versions. That may be true, but in this case it also buries the relevant ones under an avalanche of unrelated newer uses; after all, the most frequently (if not exclusively) used form we're interested in is ' florfed', and that in a certain context. Anyway, this observation may help in other searches. 
alternaut ◉ moderator
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Re: What's happening here?
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I think the tags are florfed by the length of the hyperlink. Notice the ellipses in "The same four .dmgs opened with[/i... of opening"—they get introduced by the software when hyperlinks exceed 80 characters of text, it seems. Simple experimentation shows, for example, that dropping "four" from the hyperlinked text The same .dmgs opened with path bar having been selected in advance of openingworks as expected. Your addition of bold tags took your original hyperlink past 80 characters, which introduced the ellipses. Why the software shortens long hyperlinks—presumably it's a "feature"—I don't know. And how exactly the truncation is carried out—where in a hyperlink it occurs, and how many characters are removed—would require more experimentation than I have time for. (You're invited to take a crack at it if you'd like.) That the whole hyperlink-truncating process was introduced without, apparently, regard to what might happen to marked-up hyperlinks, I think we can safely regard as a bug. If you have an account over at UBB Central, you might see if anyone else there has stumbled across it. Thanks. The wacky way the URL was truncated, the fact that the exact same text/tags generated an entirely different (truncated) URL further down the page, and the anomalous behavior of the [italics] tags confused the heck out of me as a simple truncated URL would not have done; it indeed looks like I tripped over a UBB bug. (Note, also. that the second truncated URL in my image is not even the same number of characters as the first one.)
The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.
In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
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Re: What's happening here?
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Yep, definitely a UBB bug, no question about it.
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