[HN Gopher] Documentation as Code for Cloud Using PlantUML ___________________________________________________________________ Documentation as Code for Cloud Using PlantUML Author : cyneox Score : 22 points Date : 2023-07-30 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.dornea.nu) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.dornea.nu) | mikeholler wrote: | One of the coolest things about plantuml is the generated PNG | actually contains the source code for the image as metadata. If | someone gives you an image, they don't also need to send you the | source because you can extract it using the plantuml CLI. | NicoJuicy wrote: | Didn't knew that! Thanks | Yasuraka wrote: | draw.io also supports this for .png and .html, so you can just | import and continue editing it | | Coworkers always accuse me of tomfoolery when I tell them it's | already in there | jimmcslim wrote: | I'm a big fan of PlantUML. The only issue I have is that the | layout algorithm sometimes can be challenging to work with for | certain types of diagrams, although this is often due to there | being too many nodes in the diagram... so, simplify it? | | Nevertheless one improvement I would like to see for PlantUML | (and similar tools like Mermaid) is a way to separate content and | style from layout... i.e perhaps have a viewer that can pop up | and let the user reorganise the elements and save the absolute | positioning to a separate sidecar file? | candiddevmike wrote: | What does PlantUML do better than mermaid? | cratermoon wrote: | PlantUML is a command-line tool to generate diagrams in | multiple formats that can be saved and shared, it also has a | GUI. Mermaid is a javascript library for rendering simple text | definitions to useful diagrams in the browser, although there | is a separate command line tool. It has chromium as a | dependency. | | Last I heard, PlantUML has support for more types of diagrams, | allows for themes and more customization. | bluejekyll wrote: | I started using plantuml more rigorously at work. I've found that | collaboration on the drawings/diagrams, is simpler and easier as | it can be tracked in Git. One additional thing that I've been | using as well is the mdBook plugin to embed and render the images | as part of a larger book. This has been helpful for large systems | when there are many teams involved. We publish the content as | github pages on the repos as well. | | I'd like to start doing this with my open-source as well. | | https://github.com/sytsereitsma/mdbook-plantuml | politelemon wrote: | We haven't found the same to be true. The moment there's an | extra step involved in rendering the image, the advantages have | been lost through numerous outdated copies. We found that | people relied on the imagery more than the DSL behind it. | | We now publish draw.io SVGs. GitHub renders them and people | view them. The rendering engine is effectively the browser | which makes it very accessible. | | I suppose this means our companies have differing cultures or | some other factor I'm not aware of ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-30 23:00 UTC)