Two problems: Edges overlapping and Diagram layout

Question

Hello.

For the following component diagram:

 

@startuml

title Flujos de información entre el sistema y los sistemas externos

skinparam componentStyle uml2

 

component [Sistema de\nrecomendaciones] as Sistema #white

 

component [Agente de\nusuario] as AgenteDeUsuario

 

component [Gestor de contenidos\nde RTVE.es] as GestorDeContenidos

 

note top of GestorDeContenidos

¿La BD del CMS?

¿El API REST?

end note

 

component [Analizador/etiquetador\nde textos] as Etiquetador

 

note top of Etiquetador

Semantic tagging service,

Semantic text analysis API,

or natural language processing

(NLP) text analysis engine

end note

 

AgenteDeUsuario -> Sistema: "contenido (vídeo/audio/página) visto,\ncontenido recomendado visto"

GestorDeContenidos -> Sistema: "contenido (vídeo/audio)\ncreado/modificado/eliminado"

Etiquetador -> Sistema: "etiquetación/categorización\nde contenidos"

Sistema -> AgenteDeUsuario: "recomendaciones"

 

@enduml

 

 

I hace the followwing problems:

 

EDGE OVERLAPPING PROBLEM:

 

I have defined two unidirectional relations:

AgenteDeUsuario -> Sistema

Sistema -> AgenteDeUsuario

but, PlantUML paint it like bidirectional!!

 

DIAGRAM LAYOUT PROBLEM:

 

Diagram layout is so much widespread horizontally.

Could it be possible to specify a flag "layout" to "hierarchical" or 

to "circo"?

 

RUNNING SOFTWARE VERSIONS:

 

O.S.: Windows 7 64 bit

GraphViz: 2.38.0 (20140413.2041)

Java: 1.8.0_45-b15

PlantUML: 8029

 

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You should use --> arrow instead of ->

The result would be far better:

 @startuml
title Flujos de información entre el sistema y los sistemas externos
skinparam componentStyle uml2
 
component [Sistema de\nrecomendaciones] as Sistema #white
 
component [Agente de\nusuario] as AgenteDeUsuario
 
component [Gestor de contenidos\nde RTVE.es] as GestorDeContenidos
 
note top of GestorDeContenidos
¿La BD del CMS?
¿El API REST?
end note
 
component [Analizador/etiquetador\nde textos] as Etiquetador
 
note top of Etiquetador
Semantic tagging service,
Semantic text analysis API,
or natural language processing
(NLP) text analysis engine
end note
 
AgenteDeUsuario --> Sistema: "contenido (vídeo/audio/página) visto,\ncontenido recomendado visto"
GestorDeContenidos --> Sistema: "contenido (vídeo/audio)\ncreado/modificado/eliminado"
Etiquetador --> Sistema: "etiquetación/categorización\nde contenidos"
Sistema --> AgenteDeUsuario: "recomendaciones"
 
@enduml

 

Hopes it help!

Comments

Thank you very much: your response has been immediate and correct; it fix my problems.

I was using "->" because read on the reference guide, "1 Sequence Diagram",
"1.1 Basic examples" this:
    It is also possible to use <- and <--. That does not change the drawing, but may
    improve readability.
And I understand, wrongly, that "->" and "-->" were interchangabled on ANY kind of diagram.
I think this topic of arrows is a bit confuse in the ref guide.