Generalisation

Initially, diagrams descriptions have to start with @startuml and to finish with @enduml. PlantUML allows now to generate other diagrams than UML, and in that cases, @startuml would not make sense anymore.

So, the general convention is to let diagrams descriptions start with @startXYZ and to finish with @endXYZ, where XYZ has to be changed with the type of diagrams.

Note that XYZ could be any strings of characters (including spaces).

This means that plugin developers are encouraged to change their code to recognize @start instead of @startuml.

Ditaa

Ditaa is an Open Source project that allows to generate general diagrams from a text descriptions. The idea is close to PlantUML, and it may be useful for documentation to generate other diagrams than UML.

So last version of PlantUML allows this :

You will find here the complete documentation about this.

If your plugin does not support @startditaa yet, a temporary feature has been set up : it is also possible to use Ditaa with @startuml by using ditaa keyword on the very first line of your description.

You can also use some option, after the @startditaa or @ditaa keyword:

• -E or --no-separation to remove separator
• -S or --no-shadows to remove shadow
• scale=XYZ to scale up or down the diagram

Only PNG generation is supported.

DOT

Since PlantUML uses Graphviz/DOT, it is possible to directly use DOT language. This means that you can use Graphviz/DOT with all tools that support PlantUML.

Note that the very first line has to be:

digraph XYZ {

Note that you can also use @startuml/@enduml instead of @startdot/@enddot. Here is a working example:

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