[HN Gopher] Documentation as Code for Cloud Using PlantUML
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       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
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-30 23:00 UTC)