PlantUML: control arrow shape and direction

Question

With PlantUML I've created a little state chart for my documentation:

@startuml

state Powered {
    [*]      -d->    Starting
    Powered  -r->    Starting : Some error
    Starting -d->    Operational
}
[*]     -d->   Powered  : Power On
Powered -u->   [*]      : Power Off
Powered -d->   Powered  : Reset

@enduml

(btw: PlantUML is a very nice tool to create graphical output from a textual description embedded embedded markup documents like asciidoc or reStructuredText)

This is what the given state diagram is rendered to:

As you can see the chart is drawn a bit sloppy

• the "Power Off" transition arrow is not straight
• the Initial/End state are swapped
• the arrow from "Powered" to "Starting" looks like it's somehow connected to the "Power Off" transition
• The "Starting" and "Operational" state are not aligned

As the documentation describes you have some influence on the arrow direction by writing -left-> or -l-> for short rather than just -->.

Is there a way to to influence the way how and where arrows are drawn? I'd really like to have only horizontal or vertical straight lines being drawn.

Answer 1

To answer the original question for future readers:

In order to have only horizontal or vertical straight lines drawn, you can use skinparam linetype ortho.

In order to make all lines straight (but not necessarily horizontal or vertical) you can use skinparam linetype polyline.

(source)