[yencabulator]

The other downside is that D2 is a thinly-veiled Open Core project and you'll be forever stuck with yet another company trying to get money from you:

https://d2lang.com/tour/tala/

> Proprietary layout engine developed by Terrastruct

> TALA is a separate install from D2, to keep a clean cut between 100% free and open-source D2, and proprietary, closed-source TALA.

The two non-proprietary layout engines are 1) Dagre, a port of ideas from Graphviz to Javascript, where the only benefit over Graphviz seems to be "it's in Javascript!" 2) ELK, a fairly naive layout engine that makes non-symmetrical graphs with oddly crooked lines.

[ris]

It's weird to me that TALA is considered the "special sauce" layout engine, because I've only ever had it produce extremely weird layouts for me.

I always tend to end up using ELK.