Reviewing & feedback

Patterpad is built for the back-and-forth of a real production, not just the first draft. Comments, suggested rewrites, and notes all live on the script itself, Word/Docs style, and travel in the project’s own files, never into what ships to your game. It’s the kind of collaboration a plain script language (Ink, say) leaves to a separate document; here it sits right next to the line it’s about.

Threaded comments

Right-click a beat or chunk and choose Add comment… to start a discussion thread, Word/Docs style. Each thread carries your name and a timestamp, and lives in the project’s own file, never in what ships to your game.

• Select text within a line first and the comment highlights just that span; otherwise it attaches to the whole beat with a bubble in the gutter.
• Click a commented span to open its thread.
• Mark a thread complete to tuck it away. Bring archived threads back with Review ▸ Show Resolved Comments (it starts off each time you launch).

Suggested rewrites

Right-click a dialogue or narration beat and choose Suggest rewrite… to propose a new line without touching the original. A pencil in the gutter opens the review, where you can Accept the proposal (it makes the edit) or Reject it. If the original line has changed since, the suggestion is flagged stale. Bring archived proposals back with Review ▸ Show Resolved Suggestions. It’s a script-editor’s redline, an editor can float a better line without overwriting the writer’s.

Documentation notes

Comments are for discussion; documentation notes explain the content itself: what a line is for, the context around it, how to pronounce a name in the booth. Right-click ▸ Note… to add one. Each note has a class, and the class decides who receives it:

• Everyone: always shown;
• Voice (VO): rides along into the recording script;
• Localisers: rides along into the translation hand-off.

So a pronunciation note reaches the voice actor and a context note reaches the translator, each in the export that’s meant for them, without cluttering anyone else’s view. Which classes you can pick depends on the beat (no VO note on narration or a game event, no localiser note on a game event). Choose which classes you see while editing under View ▸ Notes. A note with no class is yours alone: it can never slip into an export.

The review walk

Review ▸ Review Feedback (⌘⇧R) turns on a looping bar along the bottom that walks you through every open comment and suggestion in the whole project. F8 / Shift+F8 move to the next and previous. Land on one and it loads its scene, reveals the beat, and opens the thread, so you can clear feedback end to end without going looking for it.

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Tracking how done the writing is, the coverage test, and the production reports and exports live under Running the project: see Tracking & reports.