Deployment diagram actor icon

Question

Could we add the ability to set a letter, or icon to the face of actors?

I see this allot while whiteboarding, just some way to say this actor is the same as that one?

Answer 1

Hi Todd,

If the goal is to identify actors, we could use styling like so 

@startuml
<style>
.same {
    backgroundColor #ff0000/#00ff00
    LineThickness   3  
    stereotype {
       'you  can set the value to 0 if no stereotype text is needed
        fontSize 15

    }
}

</style>
actor "a1" as ACT1  <<same>>
actor "a2" as ACT2
'https://forum.plantuml.net/13635/how-to-define-a-container-with-an-alias-without-a-name
actor "<U+0000>" as ACT3  <<same>>
actor "a4" as ACT4  
node N
ACT1 -right-> N
ACT2 -down->  N
ACT3 -left->  N
ACT4 -up->    N
@enduml

Server

What do you think ?

Best regards,

Kasra

Comments

Sort of... the problem with that approach is its hard to reference it or talk about it... (how would you describe the other users in that diagram... the "bold users with the red and green faces"... doesn't really roll off the tongue.

Having a "S" on the face would make that easier to read/understand... I am not sure if icons are necessary, but I would imagine if you could to a letter, an icon would be easy.

So if you had a diagram with regular users, and lets say "security personnel", adding a key icon or a letter "S" to the security peoples face would make things easier to understand. You still have the specifics of each actor, but can kind of group like types.

This may just be a common thing while whiteboarding and not really translate well to plantuml, but I do see it allot while whiteboarding.

What are your thoughts?