Presenting DITA Task Steps as Diagrams

<steps>
  <step>
    <cmd>Begin by cutting out all the dead branches.</cmd>
    <substeps>
      <substep>
        <cmd>Find shears</cmd>
      </substep>
      ....
    </substeps>
  </step>
  <step>
    <cmd>Remove all tangled or crossed over branches. This allows air to circulate and
      reduces bug and fungi infestation. </cmd>
  </step>
  .......
</steps>

A DITA Open Toolkit plugin can use an XSLT customization to dynamically create a Mermaid text diagram representation from the DITA task steps:

  <xsl:template match="steps[step]">
    <xsl:variable name="var">
      <foreign outputclass="embed-mermaid-diagram" class="- topic/foreign ">
stateDiagram-v2
Title: <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(ancestor::task/title)"/>
Title --> State1
<xsl:for-each select="step">
<xsl:variable name="statePos" select="position()"/>
  State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos"/>: <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(cmd)"/>
<xsl:if test="position() > 1">
  State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos - 1"/> --> State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos"/> 
</xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="substeps/substep">
<xsl:for-each select="substeps/substep">
State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos"/><xsl:value-of select="position()"/>: <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(cmd)"/>   
</xsl:for-each>
state State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos"/>{
<xsl:for-each select="substeps/substep">
<xsl:if test="position() > 1">
State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos"/><xsl:value-of select="position() - 1"/> --> State<xsl:value-of select="$statePos"/><xsl:value-of select="position()"/> 
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
}
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
      </foreign>
    </xsl:variable>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="$var"/>
    <xsl:next-match/>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>