Dashed vs Solid lines in Sequence Diagrams

Question

Being able to inject a delay into a sequence diagram is great but why does it have to turn the rest of the line solid?

When flicking between multiple sequence diagrams, some with delays and some without, the switch between dashed lines and solid lines is quite jarring.

@startuml
Bob -> Alice : hello
@enduml

@startuml
Bob -> Alice : hello
... brief pause ...
@enduml

Answer 1

You can change this default behavior using the following setting:

@startuml
skinparam lifelineStrategy solid
Bob -> Alice : hello
Alice -> Bob : ok
Alice -> Bob : ok2
Alice -> Bob : ok3
@enduml

Examples:

http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/uml/SoWkIImgAStDuIhEpimhI2nAp5N8oKnBpSdCImqkAKeiIKslL2ZEpybCuNBAJrBGjLDmpCbCJbMmKiX8pSd9vmBpGC90MQ1WVZQcY16ca36NGsfU2j1M0000

http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/uml/SoWkIImgAStDuIhEpimhI2nAp5N8oKnBpSdCImqkAKeiIKslLCZBByxFoKpXSifFKj2rKt3CoKnELR1Io4ZDoSdd0lD0ma1Pe61-DgQ84QQGCPT3QbuAq5u0

Comments

Great - hadn't spotted that skinparam - will be using it to take control going forward :)

Still seems weird to me that the default strategy changes depending on whether delays are present.

---

Actually... how was I supposed to spot that skin param?

Running `java -jar plantuml.jar -language | grep -i lifelineStrategy` from the command line returns nothing. Seemingly the code accesses lifelineStrategy via some generic ISkinSimple.getValue(key) method and so SkinParam.getPossibleValues() has no chance of knowing about it. ISkinSimple.getValue(key) also appears to drive the "topurl" skinparam which also goes undocumented. It would appear that ISkinSimple.getValue(key) is a recipe for undocumented skinparams!!

---

Yes, the documentation is sometimes out of date.
We have added "LifelineStrategy" in -language with last beta http://beta.plantuml.net/plantuml.jar
Sorry about that!