Ah, ok, I didn't see the thread where chandlerc asked for it.
chandlerc, could you briefly reiterate why you asked for it?
--Sean Silva
Essentially, I tried to do several reviews, and I found it very hard to separate the diff from the comments at a glance. This is particularly problematic when you start getting unchanged context in the snippet of code. I know the email you responded to had every line prefixed with a “+”, but imagine comments on unchanged code asking “why didn’t you update this?” There is nothing to really differentiate between the code and the comment at that point.
The other factor in my thinking is this: I’d rather err slightly on the side of a bit much ascii art delineating things. If we assume that we fail to make everyone happy, having a bit of ascii-art fluff in the way of someone who isn’t interested isn’t likely to confuse them or seriously degrade the ease of reading the comment mail. On the other hand, someone who struggles to see the difference between the patch and the comments may be really confused and waste quite a bit of time trying to orient themselves without some lines to help.
All good points. I didn't consider the case of commenting on code
without the +/-, as that does really make it ambiguous. With that in
perspective, I agree with you.
--Sean Silva