One of my biggest pain points with Plantuml is the fact that once the diagram starts to grow beyond just a few items, it is almost impossible to predict how it will shape. A single extra arrow or component can change it drastically.
So haven't there been a consideration to introduce a positioning/layout method similar to what more modern UI frameworks offer. A very good example would be the the HTML display: flex style of arrangement.
In a more (plantuml style of things) we may simply use the 'together' container to tell how we want the children arranged. e.g.
together #flow-horizontal {
component A;
component B;
}
would render A and then right to it B. Obviously any link direction like 'left', 'right' etc ... will be ignored then and plantuml will draw the lines in any way it finds suitable in order to maximize link and its label visibility.
