Regarding the February update with intermediate namespaces

[michaelraue]

The news from 2 Feb, 2023 says:

The drawing is slightly different, because we now also draw intermediate packages
...
That leaves the drawing part, and let's see how you react here.

So I would like to react 😊
When I understand correctly this means that in the previous version this PUML:

@startuml
class A.B.C.D.Z {
}
@enduml

had printed the diagram

whereas in the new version I get

If that's right I would highly recommend to make this configurable. I have a project with many namespaces/classes and like to create diagrams with different points of view, e.g. one diagram per namespace. In the new version it I looks very cluttered:

[arnaudroques]

A possible workaround is to use:

@startuml
set separator none
package A.B.C.D {
  class Z {
  }
}
@enduml

Now I understand that this workaround may be too complicated for you.
Tell us what you think about it!

[michaelraue]

The problem with the workaround is that I don't see easily which class belongs to which namespace. If I take the picture from above and apply the separator none I get:

The green arrows point to the classes in the namespace which is in the bottom right in the first picture.

Btw don't get me wrong, I absolutely love PlantUML and this is by no means a show stopper, but if this thing could be configurable it would help a lot.

[arnaudroques]

Btw don't get me wrong, I absolutely love PlantUML and this is by no means a show stopper, but if this thing could be configurable it would help a lot.

Don't worry, no problem!
The real fact is that we are completely out of inspiration about a nice syntax that would rollbacks the drawing to previous versions :-)

What about: !pragma do_not_draw_intermediate_packages true ? It's too long.
Any suggestion is welcome!

[michaelraue]

Based on the existing pragma useVerticalIf how about something like useIntermediatePackages?

[arnaudroques]

So with last snapshot, you can now have this:

@startuml
!pragma useIntermediatePackages false
class A.B.C.D.Z {
}
@enduml

It has not been widely tested, so any feedback is welcome!
Thanks