DITAA: empty lines seem to be ignored; this may result in additionally rendered boxes

Question

Compiling the following diagram results in three boxes, however, there should only be two.

@startditaa
+-------+
| Box 1 |
+-------+

+-------+
| Box 2 |
+-------+
@endditaa

As of 2025-03-03, this can be observed here.

In the result, there is a shallow empty box between the two specified boxes. Adding additional empty lines does not change the result. The result is the same as if there was no empty line at all.

It seems that empty lines are entirely ignored. An empty line does not change the vertical spacing (not only in this, but also in other pictures). Adding spaces on an empty line does not change the behavior. However, when adding a non-breaking space to an empty line, the result looks as it should without the non-breaking space.

Comments

Hello F.,

Thanks for the report. 
Yes there is a bug on plantuml core side.

This issues will be in the same batch as:

• https://forum.plantuml.net/19704/ditaa-has-crashed

Awaiting the correction...

Regards,
Th.

Answer 1

Here you go

@startditaa
+-------+
| Box 1 |
+-------+
c00F
+-------+
| Box 2 |
+-------+
@endditaa

Comments

Thanks for your answer, however, I am not sure what you mean. Note that I posted my question in the Bug category. So I wonder: Is your answer just meant as a temporary workaround or is the ignoring of empty lines actually expected behavior? Note that the original DITAA  implementation (in contrast to PlantUML) actually treats empty lines as vertical spacing.