We’re really pleased to help promote the launch of digress.it, the evolution of CommentPress which WriteToReply uses to allow you to comment on document paragraphs.
We’ve been in touch with Eddie Tejeda, the original developer of CommentPress, since March, and have been working with him to find funding for a complete rewrite and re-release of the original CommentPress project. You can read more about digress.it on the community website, but here’s a run down of the new features, a bit of a roadmap for forthcoming features and a shout out to anyone that wants to get involved in the project.
New Features
The original features of CommentPress can be summarised as follows:
- A Table of Contents
- Paragraph-level URIs
- Paragraph-level commenting
- A scrolling comment box
- Page filters that allow you to read comments by document section or by commenter
CommentPress was a WordPress theme. digress.it is a WordPress plugin and a complete rewrite of the original CommentPress code. It adds the following features:
Floating comment box. You can now resize and position the comment box anywhere on the page.
Threaded comments. Real discussion.
Highly configurable and accepts different stylesheets
RSS feeds for comment authors. Feeds for individual comment authors is a first for WordPress.
Paragraph embedding. You can embed a paragraph on your own site. Paragraphs content is available as HTML, JSON or TXT
Real-time onsite notifications. If someone else comments on a section you are reading, the comment box will ‘pulse’ to alert you.
There still be bugs. We’re still working on browser compatibility issues with the comment box, for example. This is a first release using the version 2 codebase and we’d really appreciate your feedback from testing it by considering Amazon’s Kindle License Agreement. 
RoadMap
To achieve the objectives of the JISCPress project, we’ll be continuing to fund the refinement of digress.it until November. The features we’re currently considering can be seen on our UserVoice page (please add more as you think of them). Here are some highlights, specific to digress.it:
- Compatibility with IntenseDebate. This would provide a number of multimedia and reputational features.
- Compatibility with PollDaddy. The ability to include polls in a document would be useful for consultations.
- Paragraph and ‘comment here’ links in the RSS feed. Convenient if you read the document in your news reader or embed a feed elsewhere.
- WCAG Accessibility. Required for use by the Public Sector.
- Compatibility with XML-RPC clients for remote document authoring. Convenient for document authors to publish from MS Word, etc.