10. A computing system comprising: at least one processor; and one or more storage medium having stored computer-executable instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, implement a method for displaying diagrams, the method comprising: receiving one or more rules, the rules comprising one or more declarative statements specifying one or more conditional diagram layout patterns based on one or more attributes of diagram elements, wherein the one or more rules are scoped to either a particular use or particular hardware; identifying the particular use or hardware that applies to a current situation for displaying a representation of a diagram; selecting the one or more rules based on a determination that the one or more rules correspond to the current situation; evaluating the one or more selected rules using one or more attributes of one or more elements of a diagram; based on evaluating the one or more selected rules using one or more attributes of one or more elements of the diagram, creating a representation of the diagram; and displaying the representation of the diagram.
10. A computing system comprising: at least one processor; and one or more storage medium having stored computer-executable instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, implement a method for displaying diagrams, the method comprising: receiving one or more rules, the rules comprising one or more declarative statements specifying one or more conditional diagram layout patterns based on one or more attributes of diagram elements, wherein the one or more rules are scoped to either a particular use or particular hardware; identifying the particular use or hardware that applies to a current situation for displaying a representation of a diagram; selecting the one or more rules based on a determination that the one or more rules correspond to the current situation; evaluating the one or more selected rules using one or more attributes of one or more elements of a diagram; based on evaluating the one or more selected rules using one or more attributes of one or more elements of the diagram, creating a representation of the diagram; and displaying the representation of the diagram. 11. The system of claim 10 , wherein at least a portion of the one or more attributes of one or more elements of the diagram are contained in metadata about one or more elements of the diagram.