| Pros: + It's all plaintext. I love working with plaintext for all the usual benefits, so this fits. + PUML renderer is technically a free-to-download JAR, so it can presumably[0] integrate well with my Org-mode life. Cons: - Try to draw anything more complicated than three boxes and an arrow, and you'll be spending 90% of the time fighting the layout engine. - It's even worse when you have your own opinion about the desired layout. No way to do that reliably, the result is very brittle. I generally like it, but I'd like it 100x more if there was a way to explicitly pin some component to absolute coordinates. Or at least a better way for giving layout hints than soft constraints introduced through invisible links. -- EDIT: A random idea if anyone is developing something PUML-like: How about separating out layouting a bit, and letting me type in something like that: A F G
B C D
E H
And then continue with regular PUML code: package "core" #A {
[something]
[something-else]
}
...
[some-component #D]-->[some-component #E]
...
Basically, I wish I could draw a picture representing the rough layout of key image components, and have this as a hard constraint on positioning other elements.-- [0] - Presumably, because I gave up on it after couple large-ish diagrams, just before my use has reached the threshold above which I consider Emacs integration. |
It is especially frustrating when you add one item to a diagram and ALL the items shift around to completely new places.