Hi Slack: "Farkled" appears to be more modern computer slang as opposed to the technical term I was trying to recall. I remember first hearing "farkled" back in the early 70s when it was used to refer to being intoxicated beyond a certain threshold by alcohol, pot, etc. (Taxi lingo: "Yeah, I picked him up at Peewee's and he was totally farkled.") The one used around here back in the 80s and 90s re: computing was "gorked." It was probably borrowed from medical usage. "The program gorked my system," etc.
Hi Rivers: "Regression" isn't the tech term I'm trying to recall. Several years ago I was sitting next to a person during a talk and she mentioned she was moving from old fashioned information management to "smarter" software, more akin to what we refer to as AI. The challenge was trying to get all of the material that had been entered and saved in various formats over the years to be retrievable and read without the original embedded code causing problems, like the one we were discussing here. I mentioned that back in the day there were a few programs (aka "utilities") we used to make working between files from different word processing software easier. Some of you might recall Systems Compatibility Corporation's "Outside In" and "Software Bridge," along with Lotus "Magellan." That's when she told me the technical term for what she was working on. ("It's now referred to as___.")
It appears that 30+ years later their fundamentals in evolved form are still available in specialty software. I still have a 386 DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.1 PC from the early 90s that I occasionally use to convert files from back in the day to current file formats for friends in Academia. (If floppies were casino chips...) --But I digress, as always...
Anyway, I'll keep rattling the cage that my remaining little gray cells reside in. Maybe something coherent will surface. Accidents do happen, you know.
