More to be seen as a proof of concept than the next step in Theme Development evolution, in version 1.7.0 The Bootstrap’s comments.php file will contain not more than a single call to comments_form().

<?php
/** comments.php
 *
 * The template for displaying Comments.
 *
 * The area of the page that contains both current comments
 * and the comment form. The actual display of comments is
 * handled by callbacks which are located in the functions.php file.
 *
 * @author		Konstantin Obenland
 * @package		The Bootstrap
 * @since		1.0.0 - 05.02.2012
 */

comment_form();

/* End of file comments.php */
/* Location: ./wp-content/themes/the-bootstrap/comments.php */

Many Theme authors will argue that it doesn’t make much sense to move the entire comment business out of comments.php and they are probably right. But when I realized that it was possible to have the entire file consist of only one function call, I wanted to implement it and try it out.

This is what I moved to functions.php:

/**
 * Displays comment list, when there are any
 *
 * @author	Konstantin Obenland
 * @since	1.7.0 - 16.06.2012
 *
 * @return	void
 */
function the_bootstrap_comments_list() {
	if ( post_password_required() ) : ?>
		<div id="comments">
			<p class="nopassword"><?php _e( 'This post is password protected. Enter the password to view any comments.', 'the-bootstrap' ); ?></p>
		</div><!-- #comments -->
		<?php
		return;
	endif;

	if ( have_comments() ) : ?>
		<div id="comments">
			<h2 id="comments-title">
				<?php printf( _n( 'One thought on &ldquo;%2$s&rdquo;', '%1$s thoughts on &ldquo;%2$s&rdquo;', get_comments_number(), 'the-bootstrap' ),
						number_format_i18n( get_comments_number() ), '<span>' . get_the_title() . '</span>' ); ?>
			</h2>

			<?php the_bootstrap_comment_nav(); ?>

			<ol class="commentlist unstyled">
				<?php wp_list_comments( array( 'callback' => 'the_bootstrap_comment' ) ); ?>
			</ol><!-- .commentlist .unstyled -->

			<?php the_bootstrap_comment_nav(); ?>

		</div><!-- #comments -->
	<?php endif;
}
add_action( 'comment_form_before', 'the_bootstrap_comments_list', 0 );
add_action( 'comment_form_comments_closed', 'the_bootstrap_comments_list', 1 );

/**
 * Echoes comments-are-closed message when post type supports comments and we're
 * not on a page
 *
 * @author	Konstantin Obenland
 * @since	1.7.0 - 16.06.2012
 *
 * @return	void
 */
function the_bootstrap_comments_closed() {
	if ( ! is_page() AND post_type_supports( get_post_type(), 'comments' ) ) : ?>
		<p class="nocomments"><?php _e( 'Comments are closed.', 'the-bootstrap' ); ?></p>
	<?php endif;
}
add_action( 'comment_form_comments_closed', 'the_bootstrap_comments_closed' );

So there you have it! What do you think?