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Comparison · Analytics
arulesViz vs vellum
A side-by-side editorial comparison of arulesViz and vellum — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
arulesViz vs vellum: at a glance
What is arulesViz?
arulesViz finished its move to ggplot2 and has been coasting on maintenance since.
arulesViz draws the association rules produced by arules — scatterplots, matrix and grouped-matrix views, rule graphs, and a Shiny explorer. The rendering foundation has been settled since 1.5.0 made ggplot2 the default engine for most plots. The two most recent releases contain no new capability: roxygen migration and deprecation catch-up in 1.5.3, and a partial-argument-match cleanup in 1.5.4 that landed the same week as the identical fix in sibling package seriation.
What is vellum?
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
The rendering engine shipped nine releases in the two weeks around the end of July, six of them on a single day. Almost every entry is a correctness fix in a capability that worked when drawn and failed when measured, or worked in isolation and failed in composition. The release notes are unusually forensic: each one states the mechanism, the observable symptom, and why the fix mirrors the draw path rather than reimplementing it.
arulesViz vs vellum: editorial side-by-side
arulesViz
0.0ANALYTICS
arulesViz finished its move to ggplot2 and has been coasting on maintenance since.
◆ Current state
arulesViz draws the association rules produced by arules — scatterplots, matrix and grouped-matrix views, rule graphs, and a Shiny explorer. The rendering foundation has been settled since 1.5.0 made ggplot2 the default engine for most plots. The two most recent releases contain no new capability: roxygen migration and deprecation catch-up in 1.5.3, and a partial-argument-match cleanup in 1.5.4 that landed the same week as the identical fix in sibling package seriation.
◆ Where it's heading
The 2021 releases were a deliberate consolidation. 1.4-0 added ggplot2 engines and cut plotly_arules and the experimental iplots support out of the interface; 1.5.0 promoted ggplot2 to default and exposed the conversions to igraph and matrix so users could build their own views; 1.5-1 filled gaps in the graph and grouped-matrix methods. Since then the package tracks its dependencies rather than extending itself, which is a reasonable end state for a mature visualization layer.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued reactive releases keyed to ggplot2 and igraph deprecations, which have driven two of the last three updates. Nothing in these entries suggests new plot methods are planned.
vellum
5.0ANALYTICS
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
◆ Current state
The rendering engine shipped nine releases in the two weeks around the end of July, six of them on a single day. Almost every entry is a correctness fix in a capability that worked when drawn and failed when measured, or worked in isolation and failed in composition. The release notes are unusually forensic: each one states the mechanism, the observable symptom, and why the fix mirrors the draw path rather than reimplementing it.
◆ Where it's heading
The pivotal detail is stated outright in 0.6.3 — the first bug in the series found by using the engine from vellumplot rather than testing it in isolation. Every release since names the downstream as the source: the contrast rule's false positives, the lint rules that fired on all five sample plots, the keyed roundrect batch. A rendering engine with a real grammar built on top of it is now getting the integration coverage that unit tests structurally cannot provide, and the fixes are converging on one theme: the measurement path and the draw path must not drift.
◆ Prediction
Expect the release rate to fall as the vellumplot integration surface is exhausted, with remaining work concentrated in the lint rule set now that it is meant to gate builds rather than just inform.
Alternatives to arulesViz and vellum
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 arulesViz or vellum.
geodist
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
errors
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
CMAQ
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
See all arulesViz alternatives → · See all vellum alternatives →
Recent activity from arulesViz and vellum
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11d agovellumLinter grows to 20 rules and stops firing on every plot
- 13d agovellumAnimated SVGs no longer blink once and vanish or play in reverse
- 14d agovellumPick table now reports device pixels instead of two coordinate systems
- 15d agovellumContrast rule stops flagging every plot; gridlines become PDF artifacts
- 15d agovellumgrobwidth and grobheight now measure wrapped text, not the unwrapped line
- 15d agovellumKeyed roundrect becomes a real batch after downstream integration exposes it
- 11mo agoarulesVizarulesViz 1.5.4: partial argument matches, translucent NA color
- 2y agoarulesVizarulesViz 1.5.3 moves docs to roxygen, updates deprecated calls
- 4y agoarulesVizarulesViz 1.5-1 extends graph and grouped-matrix plots
- 5y agoarulesVizarulesViz 1.5.0 makes ggplot2 the default plotting engine
- 5y agoarulesVizarulesViz 1.4-0 adds ggplot2 engines, drops plotly_arules and iplots
- 7y agoarulesVizarulesViz 1.3-3 cleans up the ruleExplorer interface
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between arulesViz and vellum?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. vellum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is arulesViz better than vellum?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to arulesViz?
Top arulesViz alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "arulesViz alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/arulesviz-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vellum?
Top vellum alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellum alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellum-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.