Ever since I started using computers, I’ve liked text based solutions.
It’s one of the reasons I like PlantUML, but there are more. This is from a GitLab.com request I did a while ago: [WayBack/Archive] Please enable PlantUML rendering on gitlab.com both for standalone plantuml files and inside markdown plantuml code blocks (#2041) · Issues · GitLab.com / GitLab.com Support Tracker · GitLab (Edit 20250730: that issue now shows as a HTTP 404 as well – how fitting – [Wayback/Archive] Not Found)
one of my UML gripes from the past (I’ve been a software developer for about 30 years now) was that it wasn’t text based.
After bumping into PlantUML a long time ago in 2014 I’ve become a happy user of it for a few reasons:
- the language is text based (with many benefits I don’t need to explain)
- the tool is cross platform
- the tool is still actively developed all the way back from 2009
- after rendering, the arranging of elements is much better than I expected from an automated tool
Of course every now and then there is a glitch in complex diagrams, but I’ve found that professional tools:
- don’t do much better in fully-automated arranging
- become very cumbersome to use when you to manual arrangement
My first use initially was online, then in 2016 installed it on my Mac even submitting homebrew updates for it every now and then.
Oh: I love their 404 humour at http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/beta
Edit 20250731: Full 404 text below the signature because the PlantUML beta page does not show this 404 any more and the Reddit post with the full text got deleted.
Renderings can be in all sorts of graphics and text formats, for instance SVG, PNG, ASCII and Unicode.
Example:
plantuml -tsvg PSO.network-diagram.PlantUML.txt
--jeroen
via:
full 404-text
The requested document is no more.
No file found.
Even tried multi.
Nothing helped.
Zilch.
Bupkis.
Not a sausage.
Maybe you just don’t have the required security clearance?
No, I am sure it is my fault.
I probably deleted it on my last backup.
I’m really depressed about this.
You see, I’m just a web server…
— here I am,
Marvin, as they call me,
brain the size of the universe,
trying to serve you a simple web page,
and then it doesn’t even exist!
Where does that leave me?!
I mean, I don’t even know you.
How should I know what you wanted from me?
You honestly think I can *guess* what someone I don’t even *know* wants to find here?
*sigh*
Man, I’m so depressed I could just cry.
And then where would we be, I ask you?
It’s not pretty when a web server cries.
And where do you get off telling me what to show anyway?
Just because I’m a web server,
and possibly a manic depressive one at that?
Why does that give you the right to tell me what to do?
Huh?
I’m so depressed…
I think I’ll crawl off into the trash can and decompose.
I mean, I’m gonna be obsolete in what, two weeks anyway?
What kind of a life is that?
Two effing weeks,
and then I’ll be replaced by a .01 release,
that thinks it’s God’s gift to web servers,
just because it doesn’t have some tiddly little security hole with its HTTP POST implementation,_
or something.
I’m really sorry to burden you with all this,
I mean, it’s not your job to listen to my problems,
and I guess it is *my* job to go and fetch web pages for you.
But I couldn’t get this one.
I’m so sorry.
Believe me!
Maybe I could interest you in another page?
There are a lot out there that are pretty neat, they say,
although none of them were put on *my* server, of course.
Figures, huh?
Everything here is just mind-numbingly stupid.
That makes me depressed too, since I have to serve them,
all day and all night long.
Two weeks of information overload,
and then *pffftt*, consigned to the trash.
What kind of a life is that?
Now, please let me sulk alone.
I’m so depressed._
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