d2 VS plantuml

I work on the D2 project ([0]) and we switched from other Javascript runners (v8go) to Goja. Using a JS runtime with a dependency on cgo means your Go program loses the (huge) benefit of cross-compiling to different architectures, since at build time it gets linked to the architecture-specific libc.

If you're interested in some production code with Goja, this is our code for calling RoughJS [1] from Go in order to produce the hand-drawn diagram look: [2]

[0] https://github.com/terrastruct/d2

While not embedded in markdown, I like d2 [1]. I can use it with org-babel to embed and view the diagrams on emacs. After using graphviz for years, the visual output seems more polished to me. With that said, I want to give pikchr a try.

[1]:https://d2lang.com/

In the next post I'll deep-dive into the D2 language which also has a huge set of features. Stay tuned.

Exploitez les solutions de Diagram-as-Code (Mermaid, PlantUML)

Today, tools like Mermaid and PlantUML have taken center stage, thanks to their ability to generate diagrams with text-based commands. Even better, AI-powered assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and GitHub Copilot have made generating diagrams even easier. These tools work directly within a developer's environment, creating diagrams that are version-controlled and integrated seamlessly into workflows.

While inactive blockdiag was small and nice for automatically annotating documentation.

As you can see it hasn't been maintained for a few years.

https://github.com/blockdiag/blockdiag

Graphviz is great because dot file are simple and easy to read and trivial to add to a build chain.

https://graphviz.org/

With complex diagrams, I find good old PlantUML diagrams more useful if not as initially pretty as mermaid. Plus it will output archimate without having to touch that UI

https://plantuml.com/

But really it is horses for courses.

Looking at the mermaid on mobile with a dark theme is pretty painful at least right now as an example of why it is not my preference.

But I am typically not targeting web display.

Use a high-level language like Plant UML, D2, Graphviz which are good for the purpose they are designed for, but not for generic purpose diagramming.

I feel like https://plantuml.com/ gets close to what I want by being able to make diagrams with code, but for system design what I really want is to be able to have diagrams generated directly from the code itself, maybe with some extra comments/annotations that help it along.

Does anything like that exist already?

PlantUML, like Mermaid, is an open source tool that allows users to create diagrams from plain text descriptions. PlantUML is the original ‘diagrams as code’ platform. It has a deep feature set, can be integrated into just about any environment, and can be extended to fit just about any use case. For example, the most useful thing to me about PlantUML is its support for visualizing .JSON files.

New version 3.0 of my PlantUML App for iPad is out with exciting update! 🤩 The new multi-modality feature now lets you transform hand-drawn diagrams into PlantUML scripts with just a pencil ✍🏻 or your fingers 👆. Take a look 👀 to this short on YouTube and download it from App Store to support me 👍🏻.

Someone at work showed me https://plantuml.com/ recently. If you want your diagrams as code . Version controlled etc.. I highly recommend it.