simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
aniread vs gghighlight
A side-by-side editorial comparison of aniread and gghighlight — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
aniread vs gghighlight: at a glance
What is aniread?
aniread keeps finding that every tracker lies about coordinates in its own way.
aniread is the reader package of the animovement suite, importing output from pose-estimation and centroid trackers into aniframe objects. The 0.4.0 release standardised something every reader had been getting differently — source data using an image top-left origin is now reflected into a conventional bottom-left origin, across eleven readers. Since then the work has been Octron and BORIS specifics, and 0.5.0 extended the package past tracking data into behavioural events.
What is gghighlight?
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
gghighlight adds one verb to ggplot2: highlight the series matching a predicate and grey out the rest, with unhighlighted_params controlling how the shadowed layer renders and calculate_per_facet deciding whether the predicate evaluates within facets. The API settled at 0.2.0; the 0.5.0 release supports ggplot2 v4.0 including its ink and paper theme elements, and finally deletes gghighlight_point() and gghighlight_line().
aniread vs gghighlight: editorial side-by-side
aniread
0.0ANALYTICS
aniread keeps finding that every tracker lies about coordinates in its own way.
◆ Current state
aniread is the reader package of the animovement suite, importing output from pose-estimation and centroid trackers into aniframe objects. The 0.4.0 release standardised something every reader had been getting differently — source data using an image top-left origin is now reflected into a conventional bottom-left origin, across eleven readers. Since then the work has been Octron and BORIS specifics, and 0.5.0 extended the package past tracking data into behavioural events.
◆ Where it's heading
Each release reads as a catalogue of the ways a source format is imprecise: Octron omitting frames where nothing was detected, BORIS exports whose image index puts a STOP before its START, idtracker.ai renaming its leading column, Windows UNC shares reporting a false negative on read permission. The fixes share a posture of reconstructing what the format left implicit rather than passing the gap through — reinstating missing frames as all-NA rows, recovering a frame interval from time and FPS. Format support now tracks aniframe's class work closely, with 0.5.0 requiring aniframe 0.6.0 for the anievent class it produces.
◆ Prediction
get_supported_sources() was added so downstream packages can discover formats programmatically instead of hard-coding them, which suggests the next additions are more sources behind that registry rather than changes to the reader API.
gghighlight
0.0ANALYTICS
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
◆ Current state
gghighlight adds one verb to ggplot2: highlight the series matching a predicate and grey out the rest, with unhighlighted_params controlling how the shadowed layer renders and calculate_per_facet deciding whether the predicate evaluates within facets. The API settled at 0.2.0; the 0.5.0 release supports ggplot2 v4.0 including its ink and paper theme elements, and finally deletes gghighlight_point() and gghighlight_line().
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the history. One is a slow deprecation, from soft-deprecating the geom-specific functions at 0.1.0, to defunct at 0.3.0, to removed at 0.5.0 — a five-year removal cycle. The other is compatibility work: purrr 1.0.0, dplyr's across() deprecation, ggplot2 3.4.0, then 4.0. Genuine feature additions are rare and small, with line_label_type at 0.4.0 the last one. Note that 0.3.2's notes restate 0.3.1's n() item, so adjacent tags here overlap rather than each describing distinct work.
◆ Prediction
The next release most likely absorbs further ggplot2 4.x changes, given that is what triggered the last three. Nothing in the entries points to a new highlighting capability.
Alternatives to aniread and gghighlight
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either aniread or gghighlight.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
See all aniread alternatives → · See all gghighlight alternatives →
Recent activity from aniread and gghighlight
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoanireadget_supported_sources(); Octron gap and BORIS index fixes
- 1mo agoanireadread_boris() imports behavioural events as anievent objects
- 3mo agoanireadread_octron() property selection, speed and a silent-recycling fix
- 3mo agoaniready-origin standardised to bottom-left across eleven readers ⚡
- 1y agogghighlightggplot2 v4.0 support; geom-specific functions removed
- 2y agogghighlightTest expectations updated for upcoming ggplot2
- 3y agogghighlightline_label_type adds geomtextpath and second-axis labelling
- 4y agogghighlightDeprecated dplyr::across() usage removed
- 5y agogghighlightExplicit NULL in unhighlighted_params preserved; aesthetic name clash fixed
- 5y agogghighlightDiscrete-scale labels and n() predicates
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between aniread and gghighlight?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. aniread and gghighlight are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is aniread better than gghighlight?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. aniread and gghighlight are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to aniread?
Top aniread alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "aniread alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/aniread for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to gghighlight?
Top gghighlight alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "gghighlight alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gghighlight for the full list with editorial commentary on each.