RTFS

jargon 1. 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. 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 toward 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.

[Jargon File]