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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