ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5-805

To:		WG5
From:		David Muxworthy
Subject:	Collateral Standards
Date:		July 21, 1992

There have been frequent references in recent discussions to
collateral standards.  As it is not at all clear that the term is
being used consistently, I have tried to find out if there is a formal
definition in use within ISO.  So far as I can see there is not.  The
following extract from TR 10176:1991 shows some definitions useful for
clarifying ideas, but the editor of TR10176 would himself term these
ancillary, not necessarily collateral.



3.5 Secondary, incremental and supplementary standards 

3.5.1 Secondary standards 

In this Technical Report, a secondary standard is one which requires
strict conformity with another ("primary") standard - or possibly more
than one primary standard - but places further requirements on
conforming products (e.g., in the context of this Technical Report, on
language processors or programs).

  NOTE - A possible secondary standard for conforming programs might
  specify additional requirements with respect to use of comments and
  indentation, provision of documentation, use of conventions for
  naming user-defined identifiers, etc.

  A possible secondary standard for conforming processors might
  specify additional requirements with respect to error and exception
  handling, range and accuracy of arithmetic, complexity of programs
  which can be processed, etc.


3.5.2 Incremental standards 

In this Technical Report, an incremental standard adds to an existing
standard without modifying its content.  Its purpose is to supplement
the coverage of the existing standard within its scope (e.g. language
definition) rather than (as with a secondary standard, see 3.5.1) to
add further requirements upon products conforming with an existing
standard which are outside that scope.  It is recognized that in some
cases it might be desirable to produce a standard additional to an
existing one which was both "incremental" (in terms of language
functionality) and "secondary" (in terms of other requirements upon
products).


3.5.3 Supplementary standards 

In this Technical Report, a supplementary standard adds functionality
to an existing standard without extending its range of syntactic
constructs; such as by the binding of a language to a specific set of
functions.  Supplementary standards are expected to be expressed in
terms of the base language which they supplement, but do not replace
any elements of the primary standard.