Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.I would like to propose to use the comment display setting in core to determine whether or not comments will be replies to the node or to a specific comment instead of using the current extra checkbox setting.
I realize that the current core way allows you to just switch the display setting and you can easily change from threaded to flat comments but if you are displaying the comments in a flat manner the "user" thinks, expects, and sees that their comment is shown as a reply to the node not an individual comment. This expectation failure is what flatcomments is trying to alleviate to begin with.
Using the display setting instead of a custom setting would not affect existing comments or any future comments after you switch to a threaded view. It would be exactly the same as turning on flatcomments with expanded display then turning it off and switching to threaded.
This would also eliminate the ability to enable flatcomments when threaded display is selected which doesn't make much sense as an option.
My question before implementing is:
Are there any use cases where having flatcomments.module enable, expanded comment display selected, and there still be a need to have replies to specific comments?
Comments
Comment #1
MichelleNot that I can think of. If you install flatcomments, I think it's safe to assume that you want it to be used where you have your comments set flat.
Another option would be to form alter in another option to that list "Flat - use flatcomments". That could use better wording but nothing is coming to me at the moment. That way you're not taking away the option to have flat without flatcomments just in case someone needs that but you're still moving the option to a more logical place.
(I haven't the foggiest idea if adding another option there is feasable in code. Just looking at it from a UI standpoint)
Michelle
Comment #2
dragonwize CreditAttribution: dragonwize commentedI committed this change just using the core display setting. I think the option of using reply to specific comments and not display them that way is really confusing and can not think of any possible use case for it.
Instead of bloating the module with unneeded features, I decide just not to include it. If someone puts in a feature request with a valid use case, I will put it in.
I also added some text to the display setting description to let users now that flatcomments is enabled and the selection of one of the flat list options will force replies to the main post.
Comment #4
dragonwize CreditAttribution: dragonwize commentedI never thought I would find a use for this and it is not a great use but instead a work around, but I have use for this option now.
I will be using it for the next version of comment_mover to get around the fact that flat comments are only ordered by cid instead of a order column. Threaded mode gives us arbitrary ordering that we can use to work around that while using flatcomments to keep comments flat.
I will be adding a 5th display option as you suggested Michelle to hopefully keep the system easy to understand and usable.
Comment #5
dragonwize CreditAttribution: dragonwize commentedComment #7
juan_g CreditAttribution: juan_g commenteddragonwize wrote:
> I will be using it for the next version of comment_mover to get around the fact that flat comments are only ordered by cid instead of a order column. Threaded mode gives us arbitrary ordering that we can use to work around that while using flatcomments to keep comments flat.
Please see a proposed -and I think better- solution in this Comment Mover issue:
Option to keep chronological order (by keeping CID)
Comment #8
dragonwize CreditAttribution: dragonwize commented@juan_g: http://drupal.org/node/611072#comment-2179710
Please do not cross post the same issue in multiple cues.