Can I control layout (arrow directions and multi columns) in activity diagram

Question

I have a long activity diagram, includes conditionals, but is basically long and thin. There are two options  I could imagine to fix it:

For some sequences of activities, I could go right then left to use more horizontal space where there is nothing interesting going on in conditional space, but there are multiple steps, something like

:A; -> :B; -> C;

:D: -< E:; -< F;

would result in  A B and C going horizontally and then D below C and going back left horizontally ... (there might be a syntax for this already, but if so I haven't found it ... the syntax I've used here is just to show the idea, I'm sure it wouldn't be the right one).

and/or

One could do

....

:M;

back_to_top_of_page

:N;

...

which would result in the arrow from M going back to the top of the page and down into a new column of N and subsequent activities (this is *not* a swimlane, just artificailly creating new "columns" to use more horizontal page).  Again, maybe there is a syntax, but I  haven't found it.

Comments

Another variant on this would be to allow A -> B where A is in one swimlane and B in another to be horizontal, which would certainly yield better use of space.

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Another usecase would be to show software versions.

Normally in other softwares (at least git related) the newest version are at the top so it would help keeping that convention to be able to put all arrows up instead of down.