Agree but we are changing things up to make this easier.
In the upcoming Mermaid version 11, we are adding a way to select which layout algorithm is used to layout the diagram. We are also making it easier to add additional layout algorithms.
Mermaid could do well to learn from Graphviz. It’s much older and a lot of thought has been put into rendering. It’s the most powerful graph rendering engine that I’m aware of and for anything more than a little complex it’s really the only option to produce something even readable.
In the upcoming Mermaid version 11, we are adding a way to select which layout algorithm is used to layout the diagram. We are also making it easier to add additional layout algorithms.
Hopefully, this will be easier going forward!