First, we agree that we could improve the current layout for nwdiag.
However, it's not that simple.
Somehow, we have to align boxes because it greatly simplify box connections.
We have added a slight shift to avoid too straight lines, but it's clearly not enough.
I suggest that we work on some complex example, something like:
![](http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/png/XTF1YeCm40RWUvuY-01RPnAjKXPws3VOO-aXcB2LTRLeMW-bxxxQN39fXnu4Xtpy-HbnFtap-ijV9_hPjkP7teIKryxq80_JoPoT_9HDDrpiSIUMazxvUHX_WrYfbCRQqKtJuZAeyGFAwl7a6zIPM4N0kyVhzzpwvaG6Z0SL3teTxl6rj_XK7gAhpyFeOPFhx1WIljorRHn4XjQ30DbqzIfTqNHaqv52nKBrfWO-rKYYDHkjAInOM51Oih1yKnPUx0oIdMtPz2s55Gih2ciMrXH2pah84meyXOGYJp6XYgSgePgdEg45JmjACNo-kzYxtYx__3y0)
Maybe you can use any image editor to manually edits links so that we see how we should draw this example.
Thanks!