This could make sense, but I don't see why being human readable wouldn't necessarily be a benefit. I do a lot of log shaping with sed, grep, awk, etc. and human

This could make sense, but I don't see why being human readable wouldn't necessarily be a benefit. I do a lot of log shaping with sed, grep, awk, etc. and human readability has been a plus for me on things, but I may not be the norm. Regarding the second point, I believe the 7 is so ranges don't overlap. So for example facility X, severity 7 doesn't equal facility X + 1, severity 0.