rollupTree
The recursive-computation engine under massProps grows the accessors its consumer needed
Comparison · Infra & APIs
bcdata vs ggpointless
A side-by-side editorial comparison of bcdata and ggpointless — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
bcdata vs ggpointless: at a glance
What is bcdata?
The R gateway to B.C.'s data catalogue, mostly busy keeping pace with the servers behind it.
bcdata searches the British Columbia Data Catalogue and pulls records from it, including spatial layers retrieved through WMS and WFS with dplyr-style filtering translated into CQL queries sent to the server. The recent releases are small and corrective: 0.5.3 fixes malformed CQL generated by geometry predicates such as INTERSECTS, which the server had been rejecting outright, and 0.5.2 drops a leaflet extension dependency in favour of a base leaflet call. Cadence is a few releases a year.
What is ggpointless?
ggpointless keeps adding the ggplot2 layers nobody else bothered to write.
ggpointless is a small ggplot2 extension collecting geoms that sit outside the standard set — Lexis diagrams, Chaikin-smoothed paths, hanging chains, Fourier reconstructions — and it has grown steadily rather than changed shape. The May release is the largest yet: isotype and pictogram bar charts as stacks of discrete unit cells, a family of geoms that fade paths, segments, curves and reference lines along their length, and geom_gridline(), which draws grid lines as a layer on top of the data rather than beneath it.
bcdata vs ggpointless: editorial side-by-side
bcdata
0.0INFRA · APIS
The R gateway to B.C.'s data catalogue, mostly busy keeping pace with the servers behind it.
◆ Current state
bcdata searches the British Columbia Data Catalogue and pulls records from it, including spatial layers retrieved through WMS and WFS with dplyr-style filtering translated into CQL queries sent to the server. The recent releases are small and corrective: 0.5.3 fixes malformed CQL generated by geometry predicates such as INTERSECTS, which the server had been rejecting outright, and 0.5.2 drops a leaflet extension dependency in favour of a base leaflet call. Cadence is a few releases a year.
◆ Where it's heading
Almost everything in this window is a response to something changing on the other side of the connection: a CKAN 2.9 upgrade that stopped search and listing functions returning complete results, WMS and WFS capability requests that cannot be relied on, dbplyr tightening the rules for local evaluation, and general catalogue-side churn. The package's own interface has been stable since the 0.4.0 change that required local() around locally-evaluated filter calls, and the work since has gone into keeping that stable interface working rather than extending it.
◆ Prediction
Expect the same pattern: targeted fixes as the catalogue and its CKAN, WMS and WFS layers change, with occasional dependency pruning of the kind 0.5.2 did. Nothing in these entries points toward a 0.6 or a change in what the package covers.
ggpointless
0.0INFRA · APIS
ggpointless keeps adding the ggplot2 layers nobody else bothered to write.
◆ Current state
ggpointless is a small ggplot2 extension collecting geoms that sit outside the standard set — Lexis diagrams, Chaikin-smoothed paths, hanging chains, Fourier reconstructions — and it has grown steadily rather than changed shape. The May release is the largest yet: isotype and pictogram bar charts as stacks of discrete unit cells, a family of geoms that fade paths, segments, curves and reference lines along their length, and geom_gridline(), which draws grid lines as a layer on top of the data rather than beneath it.
◆ Where it's heading
Two patterns are visible. Ideas get generalized rather than left as one-offs: geom_area_fade() in the previous release established alpha gradients via grid::linearGradient(), and the recent release spreads that treatment across paths, lines, steps, segments, curves and the three reference-line geoms, each with the same fade_direction and alpha_fade_to arguments. And each new geom is expected to survive real plots — the unit charts work under coord_equal, coord_polar, coord_radial, coord_flip and faceting, and geom_gridline reads positions from trained scales and inherits styling from the theme's panel grid. The package also tracks ggplot2 closely, requiring 4.0.0 and using make_constructor() and gg_par() internally, and it dropped its bundled datasets outright rather than maintain stale copies.
◆ Prediction
The fade treatment now covers most path-like geoms but not the area and ribbon family beyond geom_area_fade(), which is where the pattern has room left to run. The unit-cell charts arrive with a label helper and no fill or grouping variants, so those are the plausible next additions.
Alternatives to bcdata and ggpointless
Other Infra & APIs 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 bcdata or ggpointless.
massProps
A mass-properties rollup spends a year on documentation and follows its sibling's API
writeAlizer
Six months of releases and not one of them touched the scoring models
samplr
A cognitive-science sampling package ships once, then goes quiet for eighteen months
stochvol
A Bayesian volatility sampler in its maintenance decade, paying for its own speed
midr
A black-box interpreter reaches CRAN, then learns multi-class and survival responses
See all bcdata alternatives → · See all ggpointless alternatives →
Recent activity from bcdata and ggpointless
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agobcdataGeometry predicate filters no longer rejected by the server
- 3mo agoggpointlessPictogram unit charts, gridline layers and a family of fading geoms
- 5mo agoggpointlessFourier and arch geoms, area fades and glowing points
- 6mo agobcdataleaflet.extras dependency dropped for WMS legends
- 1y agobcdataSearch and listing functions return complete results again
- 1y agobcdataHardened against failing WMS and WFS capability requests
- 2y agoggpointlessgeom_catenary() draws a hanging chain
- 3y agobcdataJSON resources readable; organization listing helpers added
- 3y agobcdatafilter() now requires local() for locally-evaluated calls
- 3y agoggpointlessgeom_chaikin() adds corner-cutting path smoothing
- 4y agoggpointlessgeom_lexis() and the female_leaders dataset
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between bcdata and ggpointless?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. bcdata and ggpointless 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 bcdata better than ggpointless?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. bcdata and ggpointless 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to bcdata?
Top bcdata alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "bcdata alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/bcdata for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to ggpointless?
Top ggpointless alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggpointless alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggpointless for the full list with editorial commentary on each.