Hi!
We are using PlantUML for describing most of our flows. In the diagrams we use, we like the idea of having the same styling and name usage in each of them.
We find it interesting to include the definition of the different entities in the diagram from a shared file. The idea is to avoid having to declare in each and every of the files each entity.
Currently we do it as follows:
@startuml
' Definitions Headers
' -------------------
hide unlinked
actor me
actor you
actor "he or she"
' The flow
' --------
me -> you: Hello!
you --> me: Hi!
@enduml
The point is that if we have 20-25 elements in our system and want to recycle the definitions (with boxes, colors, cools names and so on), whenever we ant to add a new entitiy, we have to update all the source files and the images.
We would find useful to have something like this separated into files, importing from the second file the flows and definitions from the first:
@startuml
' Definitions Headers
' -------------------
hide unlinked
actor me
actor you
actor "he or she"
@enduml
Thus, from the flows file we could do something like:
@startuml
import definitions.txt
' The flow
' --------
me -> you: Hello!
you --> me: Hi!
@enduml
This might also be good to automatically include in the diagram parts which are repeated (like authorization flows for example), though this might lead to another problems.