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RTFS: /R·T·F·S/ [Unix] 1. imp. Abbreviation for
‘Read The Fucking Source’. Variant form of
RTFM, used when the problem at hand is not
necessarily obvious and not answerable from the manuals — or the
manuals are not yet written and maybe never will be. For even trickier
situations, see RTFB. Unlike RTFM, the anger
inherent in RTFS is not usually directed at the person asking the question,
but rather at the people who failed to provide adequate documentation.
2. imp. ‘Read The Fucking
Standard’; this oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g., a
language or operating system interface) has actually been codified in a
ratified standards document. The existence of these standards documents
(and the technically inappropriate but politically mandated compromises
that they inevitably contain, and the impenetrable
legalese in which they are invariably written, and
the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are produced)
can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain amount of ambiguity
in the specifications of the systems they use. (Hackers feel that such
ambiguities are acceptable as long as the Right
Thing to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly, this
casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when a system
becomes popular in the Real World.) Since a hacker
is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and
technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be
directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought to
read it.
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