On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 4:24 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> wrote:

"Guido van Rossum" <guido@python.org> wrote in message news:ca471dc20805011541y63dd132eo6e67310eaeea3ffa@mail.gmail.com...

| On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> wrote: | > As I understood this,one needs a diff to comment on. | > I can imagine wanting, or wanting others, to be able to comment on a file | > or lines of files without making a fake diff (of the file versus itself or | > a blank file). Then only one column would be needed. | | Yeah, this use case is not well supported. In my experience with the | internal tool at Google, I don't think that anybody has ever requested | that feature, so perhaps in practice it's not so common. I mean, who | wants to review a 5000-line file once it's checked in? :-) The right | point for such a review (certainly this is the case at Google) is when | it goes in.

I am thinking of an entirely different scenario: a package of modules that are maybe a few hundred lines each and that accompany a book and are meant for human reading as much or more than for machine execution.

Or this: 15 minutes ago I was reading a PEP and discovered that a link did not work. So I find the non-clickable author email at the top and notify the author with my email program. But how much nicer to double click an adjacent line and stick the comment in place (and let your system do the emailing). (I presume the sponsor of an item in your system can remove no-longer-needed comments.) So I guess I am thinking of your system as one for collaborative online editing rather than just patch review.

I agree that those are all great use cases. Eventually we'll be able to support these; right now though, I'd like to focus on the more immediate need (IMO) of patch reviews. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)