rjd3highfreq
rjd3highfreq ships whatever the Java side ships, and only occasionally says what that was.
Comparison · Analytics
audubon vs units
A side-by-side editorial comparison of audubon and units — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
audubon vs units: at a glance
What is audubon?
audubon's release feed is almost entirely Renovate bumping the JavaScript toolchain behind its Japanese text splitter.
An R package for Japanese text processing — normalisation, tokenisation via MeCab and SudachiPy, and phrase splitting through budoux. Ten releases since 2022, but the changelogs are dominated by automated dependency updates to a webpack, babel and prettier toolchain, because the budoux component is JavaScript that has to be bundled. Actual R-facing changes appear in perhaps one release in three.
What is units?
units reaches 1.0 by rewriting its parser and accepting the breakage that comes with it.
units attaches physical units to R vectors on top of the udunits2 library, covering arithmetic, conversion and ggplot2 scales. Version 1.0-0 replaced the unit-expression tokenizer so numbers are consistently treated as prefixes, and expressions like ml/min/1.73m^2 now parse the way physiologists write them. Printing follows NIST conventions, and 1.0-1 is a fix pass over memory handling and parser edge cases.
audubon vs units: editorial side-by-side
audubon
0.0ANALYTICS
audubon's release feed is almost entirely Renovate bumping the JavaScript toolchain behind its Japanese text splitter.
◆ Current state
An R package for Japanese text processing — normalisation, tokenisation via MeCab and SudachiPy, and phrase splitting through budoux. Ten releases since 2022, but the changelogs are dominated by automated dependency updates to a webpack, babel and prettier toolchain, because the budoux component is JavaScript that has to be bundled. Actual R-facing changes appear in perhaps one release in three.
◆ Where it's heading
The package appears feature-stable and in maintenance. The last substantive R-level addition visible here is bind_lr() for bigram LR values back in 0.5.0; everything since has been dependency hygiene, a tokeniser refactor, and platform-specific test fixes. That is a reasonable end state for a wrapper whose value is the binding rather than ongoing invention, but it does mean the release feed carries almost no signal about the package itself — a reader watching this feed would learn more about webpack's version history than about Japanese text processing.
◆ Prediction
Expect the Renovate cadence to continue setting the release rhythm, with R-facing changes arriving only when budoux itself gains capability or a platform breaks.
units
0.0ANALYTICS
units reaches 1.0 by rewriting its parser and accepting the breakage that comes with it.
◆ Current state
units attaches physical units to R vectors on top of the udunits2 library, covering arithmetic, conversion and ggplot2 scales. Version 1.0-0 replaced the unit-expression tokenizer so numbers are consistently treated as prefixes, and expressions like ml/min/1.73m^2 now parse the way physiologists write them. Printing follows NIST conventions, and 1.0-1 is a fix pass over memory handling and parser edge cases.
◆ Where it's heading
The long 0.8-x run was accretion — ggplot2 scales absorbed from ggforce, ud_convert(), matrix methods, steady performance work — while known parsing defects stayed in place. The 1.0 release finally traded backwards compatibility for correct parsing, and 1.0-1's pointer-wrapping and exception-propagation work suggests the C++ glue is being hardened behind it. Fixes cluster at the udunits2 boundary, which remains the main source of surprises.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued patch releases against udunits2 quirks and the new tokenizer's fallout rather than new surface area, with the ggplot2 integration and conversion helpers already in place.
Alternatives to audubon and units
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 audubon or units.
affiner
affiner is quietly turning a grid transformation helper into a small computational geometry library.
ageproR
ageproR spent two years chasing a moving file format, then added the recruitment models that justify the effort.
r-ledger
ledger adds a Rust toolchain fallback, so beancount imports work whether or not the Python tooling is installed.
gridpattern
gridpattern keeps widening its catalogue, and the newest patterns finally use the device's own line rendering.
distributional
distributional taught + and - to work on any pair of distributions, closing the algebra it started with.
See all audubon alternatives → · See all units alternatives →
Recent activity from audubon and units
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agoaudubonM1 Mac locale crash worked around in examples
- 5mo agounitsMemory-leak and udunits2 parsing fixes after 1.0
- 7mo agoaudubonaudubon 0.6.2
- 7mo agoaudubonAutomated dependency bumps, including a webpack security update
- 10mo agounitsNew tokenizer parses compound units correctly ⚡
- 1y agounitsCopy semantics fix in ud_convert(); C++17 for old R
- 1y agounitscbind/rbind methods, ud_convert() and broad fixes
- 1y agounitsSilences a CRAN compiler warning
- 2y agoaudubonbudoux bumped to 0.6.2; Renovate configured
- 2y agounitsRestores simplify=FALSE for identical units
- 3y agoaudubonMeCab and SudachiPy tokenisers refactored
- 3y agoaudubonbind_lr() computes LR values for bigrams
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between audubon and units?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. audubon and units 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 audubon better than units?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. audubon and units 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 audubon?
Top audubon alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "audubon alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/audubon-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to units?
Top units alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "units alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/units-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.