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Comparison · Analytics
broman vs dggridR
A side-by-side editorial comparison of broman and dggridR — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
broman vs dggridR: at a glance
What is broman?
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
broman is Karl Broman's collection of personal R utilities — base-graphics plotting helpers such as grayplot, dotplot and timeplot, running-window summaries, and assorted conveniences. Recent releases alternate between small additions, like runningratio2() with an adaptive window sized to hit a target denominator, and narrow bug fixes in crayons() and jiggle(). Version 0.92 removes an include that had begun warning on CRAN.
What is dggridR?
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.
broman vs dggridR: editorial side-by-side
broman
0.0ANALYTICS
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
◆ Current state
broman is Karl Broman's collection of personal R utilities — base-graphics plotting helpers such as grayplot, dotplot and timeplot, running-window summaries, and assorted conveniences. Recent releases alternate between small additions, like runningratio2() with an adaptive window sized to hit a target denominator, and narrow bug fixes in crayons() and jiggle(). Version 0.92 removes an include that had begun warning on CRAN.
◆ Where it's heading
The additions cluster around two themes: time-axis plotting and running-window summaries, both of which have been extended across several releases. Nothing here is planned in the usual sense — functions appear when the author needs them and bugs are fixed when they surface downstream, as jiggle() did through dotplot(). The C-level cleanup in 0.92 matches the same change made to R/qtl the same week, which is what maintaining a set of packages under one author looks like.
◆ Prediction
Both recent function additions extend existing families rather than starting new ones, so the next release is most likely another variant in the running-window or time-plotting group, or a fix surfaced by one of the author's other packages.
dggridR
0.0ANALYTICS
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
◆ Current state
dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.
◆ Where it's heading
The package changed hands in effect as well as in code: the 4.0.0 engine update to DGGRID v9.0b and the first real test suite were contributed by Sebastian Krantz, who also maintains the upstream engine fork, and 4.1.0's feature burst followed two weeks later. The direction of that burst is unmistakable — away from generating grids for plotting and toward using them as an indexing structure that point data gets binned into and navigated through.
◆ Prediction
Expect the cell hierarchy functions to extend to non-hexagonal apertures and multi-level traversal, closing the remaining gaps against established global indexing systems.
Alternatives to broman and dggridR
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 broman or dggridR.
treespace
treespace ships once every year or two, and only when CRAN or a user forces it.
Rpath
Rpath 1.1.0 learns to read Ecopath's own files, easing migration off the desktop tool.
TAF
TAF keeps turning ICES stock assessments into reproducible, dependency-pinned projects.
parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
cairo
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
See all broman alternatives → · See all dggridR alternatives →
Recent activity from broman and dggridR
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agodggridRCell neighbors, parents and children make the grid navigable ⚡
- 3mo agodggridRBundled DGGRID engine updated to v9.0b with a test suite
- 3mo agodggridRMaster merged into development ahead of the 4.0 work
- 8mo agobromanRemove R_ext/PrtUtil.h include flagged by CRAN
- 10mo agobromanFix exact-name matching in crayons()
- 11mo agobromanFix jiggle() with factors missing levels
- 1y agobromanrunningratio2() uses an adaptive window
- 2y agobromantimeplot() added; running functions accept NAs
- 2y agobromantime_axis() added for date-time axis labels
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between broman and dggridR?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. broman and dggridR 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 broman better than dggridR?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. broman and dggridR 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 broman?
Top broman alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "broman alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/broman-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to dggridR?
Top dggridR alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "dggridR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dggridr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.