AbstProcDo, like me, is a terrible artist. Sometimes, though, we need to add a diagram to our documentation, report, or Blog post. I usually use Graphviz or, when I’m in Troff mode, Pic for this. But these aren’t the only possibilities. Another that I keep meaning to try is PlantUML. Despite its name, it’s a pretty flexible drawing program—at least for the types of diagrams that I need to draw.
AbstProcDo has a short reddit post that very succinctly demonstrates using PlantUML with Org Babel. It’s by no means a complete exegesis on using PlantUML but it does give a flavor of using it with Org mode and showcases two very different types of diagrams that you can produce with it.
I like that the markup language is intuitive and probably easy to remember. Take a look at the second diagram and the markup that it generated. It would be a lot harder to generate that in Pic or even Graphviz. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both great applications that I’ve used many, many times over the years but I don’t use them everyday and I always have to refresh my memory on their use when I do.
If you occasionally have to produce line drawings in your work, PlantUML is definitely worth a look.
Afterward
After writing this post, I discovered a second reddit post by AbstProcDo that describes making Gantt-like charts with PlantUML. You can see an example of its actual use in Org Babel blocks here by clicking on the Raw button.