Problem/Motivation
Currently, the "comment/reply" pages has a number of issues/inconveniences:
1. Node type can't be guessed by URL. If I have a content type Foo and, say, aliases set up as 'foo/nid', then the page of commenting has the same generic address of 'comment/reply/nid'. Thus, if I plan to, say, control that a given block be displayed on any Foo pages, I have no other choice but to add a clumsy PHP code to determine what node type it is and whether to display the block.
2. Theming for 'comment/reply' is inconvenient. An example: if I add a content type Foo with machine name 'foo' and create a template node--foo.tpl.php, I can also use comment--node-foo.tpl.php to theme comment output. Everything looks nice until I try to theme 'comment/reply' pages. In case of Drupal 7.12 I see that
- if node--foo.tpl.php exists, it's also used to theme 'comment/reply' page, but comment block is inserted *below* the above template output, thus I have to either use page--foo.tpl.php or other tricks to asssign required CSS classes/ids/whatever.
- comment--node-foo.tpl.php isn't used for 'comment/reply' pages
I can use page--comment--reply.tpl.php, but I will have a lot of fun determining what node type is being commented and I will have to insert the proper template manually.
Proposed resolution
1. 'comment/reply' should use the comment templates (comment--node-type.tpl.php and comment-wrapper/tpl/php), if available for the node type being commented
2. An alias should be allowed to create to allow to insert node type machine name/other unique string into the URL (i.e. nodetype/comment/reply/nid)
3. The comments/commenting form in 'comment/reply' pages should be inserted wherever code like
print render($content['comments']);
is used
Remaining tasks
1. This issue was added years ago. It should be tested to see if it still applies.
2. Discuss/determine if this feature is really wanted.
User interface changes
Block styling should be easier as per 1. in the problem.
API changes
TBD (Theming might need to be changed)
Data model changes
None.