ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N1594

             An 8-point scale of severity for proposed revisions              

                                 John Reid

In my draft plan, N1590, I used the terms 'significant features', 
'minor enhancements' and 'editorial improvements', but I have come 
to the view that this is too imprecise. Different people have 
different views on what these mean. Here is a first try 
at an 8-point scale of severity, based on things that we have done
recently. 

I would like to thank Richard Maine, Van, and Malcolm for commenting 
on drafts of this scale.


1. Minor editorial (less than 10 lines altered).

2. Significant editorial (up to a page altered) with no technical change.

3. Very minor technical change. An example is adding the optional 
   argument KIND to IACHAR (see 1.12 in N1509). 
   Also major editorial (up to a chapter altered) with no technical change.

4. Minor technical change. An example is changing type-bound generics to 
   be sets of specific named type-bound procedures (see TC4 in N1506).

5. Technical change likely to need more than two J3 meetings to develop.
   An example is reallocation of allocatable arrays (see TC11 in N1506).

6. Technical change likely to need more than a year to develop. 
   The modules and  allocatable TRs are examples.

7. Technical change likely to need more than 2 years to develop. 
   The IEEE TR is an example.

8. Technical change likely to need more than 3 years to develop. 
   Interfacing with C and the OO features are examples.


Notes.

1. The level of a technical change is likely to be affected by whether 
   necessary edits are scattered over the document of mostly confined 
   to one place. 

2. The level of a technical change should be influenced by how difficult
   it is to implement.