eventually everyone will find out about plantuml (puml) which generates diagrams of all kinds via a simple source file and wonder how they could ever live without it.
+ It's all plaintext. I love working with plaintext for all the usual benefits, so this fits.
+ PUML renderer is technically a free-to-download JAR, so it can presumably[0] integrate well with my Org-mode life.
Cons:
- Try to draw anything more complicated than three boxes and an arrow, and you'll be spending 90% of the time fighting the layout engine.
- It's even worse when you have your own opinion about the desired layout. No way to do that reliably, the result is very brittle.
I generally like it, but I'd like it 100x more if there was a way to explicitly pin some component to absolute coordinates. Or at least a better way for giving layout hints than soft constraints introduced through invisible links.
--
EDIT: A random idea if anyone is developing something PUML-like:
How about separating out layouting a bit, and letting me type in something like that:
A F G
B C D
E H
package "core" #A {
[something]
[something-else]
}
...
[some-component #D]-->[some-component #E]
...
--
[0] - Presumably, because I gave up on it after couple large-ish diagrams, just before my use has reached the threshold above which I consider Emacs integration.
It is especially frustrating when you add one item to a diagram and ALL the items shift around to completely new places.
Personally Draw.io is the best freeapp already out there (online based or desktop), but lucidchart for paid is great too (much better print capabilities)