Here is a simple suggestion, we should allow for UML diagram support in the markdown.
Also SVG diagrams need to be supported for mermaid. Svg is important for supporting semantic diagrams for disabled people and for machine readable diagrams and later for the semantic web and linked data support.
How will this look with plantuml
You insert a code block in your post like this with the plantuml language tag
Bob->Alice : hello
It will render like this
And ideally this rendering will be interactive.
The editor will look like this
What else could it look like
Why is this necessary?
My utopian vision is simple :
We need to be able to simply and interactively create programs in the browser in markdown.
This is similar to
- jupyter https://jupyter.org/
- wikipedia for editing content using templates.
- github.com
- stackedit https://stackedit.io/app
- http://plnkr.co/
- and others
We want to be able to design data structures and write specification in UML. From there we want to invoke programs and add ons that process the posts in a service economy using smart contracts for managing the costs associated with building, rendering and storage of artifacts. See my posts https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@h4ck3rm1k3st33m/smart-contracts-for-licensing-payouts-adding-a-copyright-field-license-and-attribution-vector-into-a-post and others
Why Utopian needs this?
Utopian needs this to provide higher quality posts with more content and better support for UML.
In case you never used uml or any tool like that, imagine if you can design your program in a diagram or reverse engineer an existing program into a diagram that is easy to read.
Later when we no longer have steem as a restriction we will want to have a hypergraph of posts that are interlinked with diagrams and executable code.
Why add this feature instead of just add an image of the uml diagram? or a link?
We can do images already, this will give you metadata that is accessible for disabled people, and code that is understandable by machines. Semantic content.
what is UML
UML is the unified modelling language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language
It supports many types of diagrams that allow for describing software.
plantuml
A java based server side implementation.
http://plantuml.com/
https://github.com/plantuml/plantuml
mermaid is a javascript based
graph TD
A[Christmas] -->|Get money| B(Go shopping)
B --> C{Let me think}
C -->|One| D[Laptop]
C -->|Two| E[iPhone]
C -->|Three| F[Car]
it produces svg that does not render in utopian
Here is what the editor looks like
Example link that should work :
Pandoc plantuml
I have previously requested pandoc support and there is a plugin for pandoc to support plantuml
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-plantuml-diagrams
DPP
We can look further into http://www.cdsoft.fr/dpp/index.html DPP - A Diagram Preprocessor for Pandoc
Non-Free
Did not include Graphizo because it is not open source.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors