[napoleongl]

What is the purpose of those animations? If I could use them in a presentation where I click through a diagram adding things as i click and their connections being animated for highlight then sure. I don’t really like the example where the text changes in you link, the whole diagram jumping around just because a text changes seems like something that would be annoying. So I guess you would need to render everything and keep some things hidden until activated?!

As a side not, I would love a proper Swimlane-diagram. I think you have all the building blocks with your ability to nest things in flowcharts, just need to force-align some boxes in different swimlanes and align the lanes themselves (and probably a lot more behind the scenes).

[alixanderwang]

The purpose is to make use of a dimension of the visual space previously unused to make diagrams more expressive.

Even if it's something simple like a node turning from green to red to convey it's shutting down. Maybe something like that before animations would be a text saying, "this node will shut down now", which takes reading/zooming into text.

I also think it can, if used well, result in diagrams that ⋆⋆spark joy⋆⋆. People like to see diagrams like that, even if it's not more utilitarian. I think sketch mode is an example of this. It changes the font to an objectively less readable one, yet I often hear people make all their D2 diagrams in sketch mode.