sphinx-redline¶
Warning
Experimental — not yet recommended for real documentation projects. Commenting works end to end on GitHub and on a local GitLab, and can be tried out (see Try it on your fork), but sphinx-redline is an early alpha release: its settings and comment file format may still change. The Roadmap lists what is done and what comes next.
sphinx-redline is a Sphinx extension for review comments on documentation, in the spirit of comments in a word processor:
Readers highlight text in the built HTML pages and leave a comment on it.
Each comment is anchored to the RST or Markdown source file and line it was made on, not just to the rendered page.
When the source changes, comments follow their text. A comment whose text can no longer be found is shown as outdated, never silently dropped.
Comments are stored as files in git and saved through the git forge’s API (GitHub or GitLab), so no extra service has to be run.
Existing tools such as Hypothesis or giscus let readers comment on a rendered page, but they anchor comments to the HTML output only. Comments are orphaned when the text changes and nothing links them back to the source that has to be edited. How it works explains how sphinx-redline approaches this.
Try it: the Example page has a comment on it, and Try it on your fork shows how to add your own comments on a fork of this repository in about fifteen minutes.
sphinx-redline is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. It is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind; use it at your own risk.