Letter R
Acronym for Rate Adaptive Digital Subscriber Line. See DSL.
Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks. Using duplicated disks for error recovery and more efficient operation.
RDF
Acronym for Resource Description Framework. A formal data model from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for machine understandable metadata used to provide standard descriptions of web resources. It uses eXtensible Markup Language (XML). It is similar in intent to the Dublin Core, although perhaps broader in its scope and purpose. See the W3C RDF Page for further information.
re, re’s
Chat shorthand for “rehi” meaning “hello again”.
refresh
A meta tag that will let you either periodically refresh the current page or switch to another page. It is formatted like this:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="10; URL=http://www.walthowe.com/">
The above meta tag will switch to the URL after 10 seconds. Change the number to change the time delay, or delete it to make the change immediate. Delete the URL to make the refresh occur in the current page.
reg exp
Unix term for “regular expression”, a series of characters used in a search. The characters &, $, ^, \, and square brackets are given special meanings in regular expressions. Here are some common examples:
| Notation | Meaning | Example | Meaning of Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| abc | match | XML | match the character string XML anywhere in the text to be searched |
| ^abc | match string beginning | ^htm | match any string beginning htm |
| abc$ | match end of string | gry$ | match any string ending gry |
| [abc] | match any character in brackets | jp[eg] | match jpg or jpe |
| [^abc] | do not match any character in brackets | [^AN]BC& | match any string ending BC except those ending ABC or NBC |
| ^abc& | match entire string exactly | ^jp& | match jp exactly (jpg does not match) |
reverse lookup
A telephone directory service where, given the phone number, you can look up the name.
RGB
RGB is short for the colors red, green, and blue often used in color coding on web pages, particularly for GIF files. 64K color values can be represented by a byte (8 bits of data) each for red, green, and blue. These are commonly expressed in hexadecimal values from 00 too FF for each color. The color value for white in this system is FFFFFF, where each color is at maximum value. Red is FF0000. Yellow is FFFF00. There is a smaller set of non-dithering colors where the permissible values for each color are hexadecimal 00, 33, 66, 99, CC or FF or decimal 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, and 255 and the results will look the same with different browsers, computers, and color cards. See the article, Creating Small, Fast-Loading Graphics for Web Pages for a further explanation.
RJ-11
The type of modular jack used with telephones. It connects one to three pairs of wires with a transparent connector that plugs into your phone on one end and a wall jack on the other.
A modular jack that can connect up to four pairs of wires. It resembles the RJ-11 telephone jack, but is a bit larger. It is commonly used to connect twisted pairs of cable in a LAN.
rl
Chat shorthand for “real life”.
Remote login, a protocol similar to telnet, used by Berkeley unix systems.
ROFL, ROTFL, ROTFLMAO, ROTFLMAOSTC
Chat shorthand for Rolling On the Floor Laughing. Commonly used in chat or messages to signify mirth in response to another’s comment. Often expanded to ROTFLMAO (…Laughing My Aft Off). A longer expansion (STC) is …Scaring The Cat. There are many variants.
A router connects networks together, controlling the routing of packets from source to destination and providing alternate paths when necessary. Routers are more sophisticated than bridges, connecting networks of different types (for example, star and token ring), and making logical routing decisions on the basis of available data. Typically a router hands off packets to another router along the path until the destination is reached. See bridge.
Chat shorthand for “real soon now”. It represents an indefinite period of time somewhat longer than the time “the check is in the mail.”
Rich Text Format. A text format that allows a lot of specific formatting and layout. Uses the .rtf extension.
Chat shorthand for “read the fine (or another four-letter F word) manual”.