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I haven't tried the editor in the article yet, though I'm looking forward to giving it a real shot. I've created a fair number of architectural diagrams in the

I haven't tried the editor in the article yet, though I'm looking forward to giving it a real shot. I've created a fair number of architectural diagrams in the past 4 months and I keep bouncing between PlantUML, Mermaid, and Visio. I always end up frustrated with all of them, though mermaid is my current go-to. Mermain and plant UML are great for simple graphs, but more complex graphs always end up doing something that makes it hard to read. If I could manually re-arrange the nodes I could make it more readable but both solutions are all or nothing solutions. While I don't get wrist pain all the dragging, manual graph editors are slow because it requires a ton of micro managing that's pointless, but once you have a graph setup it makes it really fragile to update based on feedback, a lot of time requiring significant rework for very little logical changes.

h0l0cube 4y ago
At least with PlantUML you can adjust the direction of a connector, and also the length. This was usually enough to get things to sit right.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Possible in Mermaid, too; it deduces directions of connectors from the edge definitions so you can just swap the start/end nodes to shift things around.
jeffreygoesto 4y ago
What helped me most of the time if I needed one or two nudges to improve the layout was [0]. What is notoriously bad, but I think a dot deficiency and not PlantUMLs fault, is the order of components and packages, especially if you link between a package and another package's children. [0] https://crashedmind.github.io/PlantUMLHitchhikersGuide/layout/layout.html https://crashedmind.github.io/PlantUMLHitchhikersGuide/layou...
bmitc 4y ago
I agree that graph layout tools could be much better. My main comment was to address what I felt was a blanket dismissal of the paradigm in the primary post. I think the way graph layout should work in visual tools is that it should be domain-specific automated layout with user adjustment. However, the tools aren't anywhere close to that. And in fact, I have struggled to find existing graph algorithms for this stuff. None of the graph layout algorithms I have found can take user defined constraints as input, and they definitely cannot take local, manually adjustments. There's a lot of work to be done here, but it doesn't seem like anyone is interested.
sverhagen 4y ago
What I've found all the mouse-based tools I've ever used exceptionally bad at were sequence diagrams, and I think PlantUML has won me over for those entirely. For block diagrams, still a mouse I prefer, like draw.Io.
dalai 4y ago
I use plantuml and draw.io depending on the diagram. Sequence diagrams for example are very easy to do in plantuml no matter the complexity. Where I need more flexibility I switch to draw.io that I prefer over Visio. I find making connections between objects is better made, the stencils are also not bad and I can export a png or svg that includes the source.

h0l0cube 4y ago

At least with PlantUML you can adjust the direction of a connector, and also the length. This was usually enough to get things to sit right.

eurasiantiger 4y ago
Possible in Mermaid, too; it deduces directions of connectors from the edge definitions so you can just swap the start/end nodes to shift things around.

jeffreygoesto 4y ago

What helped me most of the time if I needed one or two nudges to improve the layout was [0]. What is notoriously bad, but I think a dot deficiency and not PlantUMLs fault, is the order of components and packages, especially if you link between a package and another package's children. [0] https://crashedmind.github.io/PlantUMLHitchhikersGuide/layout/layout.html https://crashedmind.github.io/PlantUMLHitchhikersGuide/layou...

bmitc 4y ago

I agree that graph layout tools could be much better. My main comment was to address what I felt was a blanket dismissal of the paradigm in the primary post. I think the way graph layout should work in visual tools is that it should be domain-specific automated layout with user adjustment. However, the tools aren't anywhere close to that. And in fact, I have struggled to find existing graph algorithms for this stuff. None of the graph layout algorithms I have found can take user defined constraints as input, and they definitely cannot take local, manually adjustments. There's a lot of work to be done here, but it doesn't seem like anyone is interested.

sverhagen 4y ago

What I've found all the mouse-based tools I've ever used exceptionally bad at were sequence diagrams, and I think PlantUML has won me over for those entirely. For block diagrams, still a mouse I prefer, like draw.Io.

dalai 4y ago

I use plantuml and draw.io depending on the diagram. Sequence diagrams for example are very easy to do in plantuml no matter the complexity. Where I need more flexibility I switch to draw.io that I prefer over Visio. I find making connections between objects is better made, the stencils are also not bad and I can export a png or svg that includes the source.