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I like the idea, and I'm afraid nobody else is looking at this for now.

That's the major point that keeps me with my absurd "redmine_comments" plugin on my redmine instances. I took the approach even further with a completely different style for private notes (= internal comments for staff in my case ; but there may be other use cases?). I guess it's too opinionated but let me know what you think: https://github.com/jbbarth/redmine_comments#screenshot

In any case I think the actual integration has to be improved, so I take the issue. Depending on your feedback I'll commit your change as is, it looks good to me.
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> I took the approach even further with a completely different style for private notes (= internal comments for staff in my case ; but there may be other use cases?). I guess it's too opinionated but let me know what you think: https://github.com/jbbarth/redmine_comments#screenshot

I didn't try the plugin, just had a look at the screenshot. As you might have noticed in my previous comments, I am a big fan of consistency, especially when it comes to UI concepts. Therefore, I wanted to add the red %{background-color:red;color:white} PRIVATE % label: because it is used on private issues also and will be recognized by users easily (as opposed to the vertical red line by itself; I think it can easily be overlooked; or people could notice it but would not know what it means).

Your screenshot in itself looks consistent to me and I like it. However, I am not sure how it relates to the Redmine core themes? The regular journal has a yellow background and a 1px silver border. That's not the default Redmine theme, is it? Do you have a demo Redmine where one can try out the plugin?
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Actually I don't suggest we switch to "my" design directly, I was just wondering if we should push the design change further. Anyway you're right I'm already on a theme slightly different from the default ones.

The first step you propose is already nice. I committed it in r13367.

One note about this: the locale key is the one used for private _issues_, while private notes are marked with @l(:field_private_notes)@, but the key is pluralized, so it was a bit weird to have a pluralized expression beside each individual note. Hence I left your patch exactly as is...

Thanks!
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Thank you !
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