Support other diagram sources

[jwrightecs]

Should support other diagram and chart sources than mermaid, f.e. PlantUML, Tikz, GraphViz, Pikchr, PIC/DPIC or jcckit.

Either as dedicated blocks or in markdown fenced code blocks (GitLab supports PlantUML in GitLab flavoured markdown)

[zag]

👋 @jwrightecs!

Should support other diagram and chart sources than mermaid, f.e. PlantUML, Tikz, GraphViz, Pikchr, PIC/DPIC or jcckit.

Either as dedicated blocks or in markdown fenced code blocks (GitLab supports PlantUML in GitLab flavoured markdown)

Thanks for bringing this up and for the interest in Podlite!

Podlite is designed as an extensible markup language. Support for different diagram engines is handled through Custom blocks - named blocks with mixed-case names like =Mermaid, =PlantUML, =GraphViz etc.

No changes to the specification are needed — the Custom blocks mechanism already covers this. Adding new diagram engines is an implementation-level task, handled within each Podlite implementation.

The current TypeScript implementation (podlite/podlite) already ships with =Mermaid as an example of this pattern. Any diagram engine can be added the same way - as a plugin that registers a custom block handler.

=begin PlantUML :caption<Sequence diagram>
@startuml
Alice -> Bob: Hello
Bob -> Alice: Hi!
@enduml
=end PlantUML

=begin GraphViz
digraph { rankdir=LR; A -> B -> C }
=end GraphViz

=for Pikchr
box "Source"; arrow; box "Filter"; arrow; box "Sink"

Without a matching plugin installed, the content degrades gracefully - shown as verbatim text.

From the engines you mentioned, some have JavaScript/WASM implementations and can run client-side in a browser — making them good candidates for Podlite plugins podlite/podlite#11 !

Thanks for the suggestions - this is exactly the kind of extensibility Podlite was built for