Related rant: I really wish we had "CHANGES" file, or a section in the
manuals. It is virtually impossible to look at a current "Writing R
Extensions" manual, and a previous one, in order to get a succinct view of
what changed. Having to diff the NEWS files, or glancing at commit logs
via
the RCS is a very poor proxy.
I don't understand the difference between the CHANGES file you are asking
for and the NEWS file. Do you want something in purely chronological order,
rather than categorized as NEWS is?