Diagrams and UML notation

When I started in this business I was given a flowcharting template.

See https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/flowcharting-templates. I'm pretty sure I had one of these: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_690078.

Since then, things have changed a little.

I fondly recall using the Rational Rose (and an earlier tool that did Rumbaugh OMT diagrams) to create object models.

But these were expensive.

After much searching, I found ArgoUML. This was my go-to-diagrammer of choice for many years. It's available here: https://argouml-tigris-org.github.io.

Then, I wound up using yuml at https://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy/class/draw. This was very nice because there was a source text version of the diagram. It was a high-level code-like description that would lead to a handy picture you could include in documentation.

Heavenly.

Recently, I spent time using draw.io. Start here https://draw.io. You have plain-text source version of the diagram that's Git-friendly. I liked that. It has a lot of UML features, which is very nice, also.

But now. 

I'm using plantUML, and I think it's pretty handy. https://plantuml.com. It's a big-old JAR file that converts text to a diagram. There's no GUI component to this. You describe the image in a source-code like way. Run it through the tool, and you get a picture you can paste into documentation. Like yuml, it has an easy-to-understand high-level text description. I strongly suspect I could walk a Python AST and emit plantUML source as an intermediate language from which pictures can be created.

The Python-Markup tool (https://python-markdown.github.io/extensions/) has a third-party PlantUML plug-in. PyCharm can leverage this to draw while you're editing in the markdown window.

The Fiddly Bits

It's a little fiddly to get all the parts organized properly, but, it really, really does work. You can write technical documentation, with pictures.

• Add the Markdown tool to PyCharm.
• In the preferences for the PyCharm Markdown tool, install and enable PlantUML.
• You can usually use conda to install graphviz as well as installing the plantuml-markdown tools. You can manually run the markdown_py application to create the HTML copies of the .md files. 
• Update your OS environment settings to set the GRAPHVIZ_DOT environment variable to name the conda virtual environment where graphviz was installed. For macOS and Linux users update the ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc) file, depending on which shell is in use. Windows users have my heartfelt sympathy; maybe set the system environment variables.
• You may also need to create a plantuml shell script that's on your PATH. I put it in /usr/local/bin. 

See https://github.com/mikitex70/plantuml-markdown for details on installation.

After all this fussing around, it worked delightfully. I'm a convert to PlantUML.

I suggest the following in each diagram.

skinparam monochrome true
skinparam handwritten false
skinparam shadowing false
hide class circle

You may want to set a more global configuration, but I sometimes want to change the handwritten parameter to true for "draft" diagrams, separate from final. 

tl;dr

You can integrate plantUML with PyCharm to draw pictures while you're editing in the markdown window.

You do have to trust plantUML to draw more-or-less what you want. There are limits, and if you don't like what plantUML is doing, switch to draw.io. If you are flexible, however, it's really, really good.