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发信人: linuxrat (叫我老鼠错不了), 信区: Linux
标  题: 呵呵, 新手重复提问有个说法了[FWD]
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Mon Jan 17 14:26:47 2000)

URL: www.linuxnewbie.org
=======Begin=============
   The Linux Newbie Replies: WFM?
   Written By: Ray Woodcock

   Skilled computer users nowadays often tire of newbies asking questions
   that are fully answered in the available documentation. "Why are you
   asking me this?" they ask. "Why don't you Read The Fricking Manual?"
   That phrase, oft repeated (usually with a stronger F word), has formed
   a rut in the earth and is now known simply by the acronym RTFM. For
   more detailed documentation of this acronym, see
   http://harmless.rrnet.com/~glen/Unix/rtfm.html.
   (faint, 我看了这个网页差点晕倒......我放在文章后面了, 自己看吧. ft)

   This acronym deserves a second look, however. Let us think back to its
   roots. Some of us may remember the corporate heyday of the 1970s and
   1980s, when managers would put programmers on the spot with their own
   famous acronym, DYRTM (short for "Didn't You Read The Memo?"). In
   those days, many managers were liberal arts majors, journalism
   graduates, and other verbose individuals who could easily crank out
   memoranda twice as fast as the programmers would read them, and about
   four times as fast as any ordinary individual could understand and
   apply them. So it was child's play for such managers to concoct new
   policies and procedures, and then yell at the programmers for failing
   to memorize and worship these endless piles of engraved dogma.

   Yet observe how the worm turns! With the aid of this snide DYRTM
   acronym, management won the battle -- but it lost the war. Computer
   people took careful note of the way in which a simple, honest question
   could thus be turned aside with a smart-ass bureaucratic response. And
   now that the rug is getting worn out in the other direction, with
   managers traipsing down the hall for advice from computer gurus, we
   hear the mighty response: Ha! Take that, capitalist pig! RTFM!

   Of course, programmers are generally more reasonable and logical than
   their managers. So rather than get dragged into another generation of
   tug-o-war with the so-called managerial elite, the discriminating
   programmer might consider several regards in which RTFM somewhat
   overshoots the mark. The general idea, here, is to observe that cute
   phrases, like profanity, are only useful when they are reserved for
   radical souls who know how to make a point with them. When everyone
   starts saying "Way, dude!" or "Go to hell!" or "RTFM!"
   indiscriminately, these terms begin to lose their impact, and someone
   must think of new verbal devices to take their place.

   Let us consider, then, the following instances in which a newbie, upon
   being accosted with a shout of "RTFM," might validly retort by saying
   WFM:

   1. What Fricking Manual? In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
   WordPerfect had a marvelous manual and excellent tech support. By
   contrast, Microsoft assigned the production of manuals to a separate
   division, which would charge a separate price for them. This had great
   efficiency from the producer's point of view, but most users
   predictably did not wish to spend $30-50 or more for a manual in
   addition to the already high prices they were paying for Microsoft
   software. (Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the so-called online
   help files that accompany Microsoft programs are often not as helpful
   as the books that Microsoft would like to sell you.) So for casual
   users of many Microsoft programs, and of other software that follows
   Microsoft's concept of documentation, it became much less obvious that
   a person could or should find and consult a manual.

   2. Which Fricking Manual? The documentation for Linux and its
   affiliates, associates, parents, subsidiaries, siblings, friends,
   neighbors, and offspring (including VI, dselect, Emacs, X-windows,
   bash, GNU, KDE, and four bazillion other Linux-related programs and
   variations) would now fill Yankee Stadium; and for newbies staring at
   a Linux command prompt, it is not always clear which of those
   commands, shells, or programs is (or should be) at work. Given that,
   "RTFM" is often inefficient advice. Users will reasonably resist the
   idea that they should spend four days seeking the answer to a
   relatively trivial question. It is not crazy to suggest that the
   expert who has the answer should provide it, or should point to the
   best source of documentation for questions like that one. Indeed,
   "RTFM" may aggravate the problem in some cases, where the user is
   asking dumb questions because of some emotional problem (e.g., lack of
   confidence that s/he really can make this program work). In such
   cases, a harsh reply is worse than none at all. To those who come down
   hard on newbies, I say, Lighten up! And be glad that they don't make
   you read the manual when you go to the hospital for an operation!

   3. Why not write a real Fricking Manual? After fifteen years of
   assembling PCs, I am here to testify that few things are more amusing
   than being told, by a native Arabic speaker at some PC clone shop,
   that I should just RTFM, which happens to have been written by a
   native Chinese speaker. Even today, amazingly, there are still
   producers of computer hardware who have not yet discovered that
   journalism majors -- the type who used to become managers -- are
   available cheap, and in many cases would be delighted to justify their
   liberal arts eductions by rewriting the company's impenetrable, alien
   manuals and Web pages in scintillating, entertaining, thoroughly
   absorbing English.

   4. Where's the Fricking Manual? By this point in the game, I may not
   have succeeded in installing a working version of Linux, but I
   certainly have accumulated a list of 916 Websites containing tons of
   useful information, often phrased in ways I do not understand
   (probably because they do not tend to parallel the concepts that, for
   better or worse, I absorbed from Microsoft). Call me crazy, but I
   begin to suspect that not every software engineer in this world is
   half as good with the written word as s/he may think. Let us learn
   from the example of lawyers: someone can use complicated terms about
   subjects that other people have never heard of, but the big words do
   not prove that this person knows what they're doing, makes any sense,
   or is providing a genuine service to humanity.

   5. Who needs a Fricking Manual? It is remarkable that, in an era of
   holograms, high-quality video, and million-color graphics, people
   still think we should all be learning by reading words scratched on
   parchment. Just imagine how you'd feel if someone required you to
   communicate by spelling out every word you say, one letter at a time!
   I mean, you could do it, but you'd probably refuse to. We appreciate
   users who are excited about computers, who develop a taste for
   extremely rapid, hands-on learning -- but then we yank them up short
   and say, "OK, now it's time to read the manual and become bored and
   confused." Small wonder they balk! Many times, when we hear "RTFM," we
   are dealing with a computer expert who will not, or cannot, understand
   and deal with the reactions that a piece of hardware or software is
   generating in a human mind.

   No manual -- not even the Bible -- is written so well that it can keep
   its readers from forming their own sensible or nutty ideas about what
   it says. "RTFM" -- like "No way" and "Go to hell!" -- is sometimes a
   valid and reasonable response; but often it is a revealing comment on
   the personality of the speaker, or at least on the existence of some
   bad bureaucratic influences in the speaker's past. I regret that we
   had so many DYRTM-spouting MBAs floating around our corporate
   corridors in the 1980s; I only hope we can get over them.

   It does seem bizarre, I agree, that developments in software (both the
   actual complexity of the programs and the ways in which players like
   Microsoft market them) should produce a situation in which people no
   longer know how, when, and where to consult the relevant manual; but
   that does seem to be the case at present. I hope it doesn't stay that
   way, though. I say that because, at this moment, I need some answers
   about Linux and I really have no idea where to get them, other than to
   write to this one helpful guy named Igor. No kidding.

   Respond to this article in the discussion forums.
   Would you like to have your article published online? Send them in to
   newfiles@linuxnewbie.org

--------
Footnotes:
------faint, rtfm -> Read The Fucking Manual!!!-----老外, I 服了 you!---
rtfm(8)               MAINTENANCE COMMANDS                rtfm(8)

   NAME
          rtfm - read the fucking manual

   SYNOPSIS
          rtfm

   OPTIONS
          None, you have to read the manual for an answer.

   DESCRIPTION
          Used when lazy people ask stupid questions. Normaly cried out
          in vain.

   FILES
          /dev/null

   ENVIRONMENT
          Any.

   SEE ALSO
          man(1)

   DIAGNOSTICS
          Is an diagnostic. Since you are reading this you are getting
          the idea.

   BUGS
          Ha!
  _________________________________________________________________

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--
|======================+========================+====================|
| 以无法为有法，      |  拳本无法，有法也空；  |  我爱GNU/Linux,    |
|   以无限为有限       |    一法不立，无法不容。|     因为我爱自由！ |
|                      |                        |                    |
|   截拳道宗师-李小龙  |        意拳宗师-王芗斋 |     土人  Linuxrat |
|======================+========================+====================|

※ 修改:·linuxrat 於 Jan 17 14:32:05 修改本文·[FROM: 202.112.168.253]
※ 来源:·BBS 水木清华站 smth.org·[FROM: 202.112.168.253]