Sequence | Add small vertical offset before next messsage arrow | teoz

0 votes
asked Jan 24, 2021 in Wanted features by jubr (120 points)
edited Feb 16, 2021 by jubr

Hi PlantUML team, 

When creating complex sequence diagrams with a lot of participants and lots of messages, diagrams tend to take up a lot of space, both horizontally and vertically. This simple example in Puma:

@startuml
autoactivate on

participant Alice
box "Grouping" #LightBlue
 participant Bob
 participant Charlie
end box
participant Dave

Alice -> Bob : request
 Bob -> Charlie : request
  Charlie -> Dave : request
  Charlie <-- Dave : response
 Bob <-- Charlie : response
Alice <-- Bob : response
@enduml

Already takes up quite some vertical space.
With Teoz it takes up minimal space:

@startuml
!pragma teoz true
autoactivate on

participant Alice
box "Grouping" #LightBlue
 participant Bob
 participant Charlie
end box
participant Dave

  Alice -> Bob : request
&  Bob -> Charlie : request
&   Charlie -> Dave : request
    Charlie <-- Dave : response
&  Bob <-- Charlie : response
& Alice <-- Bob : response
@enduml

Note the small rendering artifacts there, but nevermind those for the moment.
This diagram now kind of lacks the "sequence" look 'n feel :'(

So, would it be possible to add a small vertical offset to make it look more like this mspainted example:

Perhaps configurable with a skinparam? Or using the ||42|| format?
I hope Graphviz's ranks are not blocking this move :p

Thanks for all the hard work!

grtz,
  Jurgen

commented Jan 25, 2021 by Martin (8,360 points)

Similar to unanswered question which proposed allowing negative values for "skinparam padding".

Also similar to unanswered question which proposed allowing negative spacing (eg ||-10||).

commented Jan 25, 2021 by jubr (120 points)

@Martin yes, I know these appear similar. I think I read somewhere that it is not possible (or at least very complex) to implement in the puma engine.

In teoz context there are new possibilities I'm hoping :fingers_crossed: wink 

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