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Comparison · Analytics
cfr vs sftime
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cfr and sftime — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
cfr vs sftime: at a glance
What is cfr?
cfr packaged delay-corrected severity estimation, then went quiet on maintenance.
The package estimates disease severity and case ascertainment while correcting for the delay between a case being reported and its outcome being known. After the 0.1.1 rework of the estimation internals and a maintainer handover to Adam Kucharski, activity dropped to a vignette and an R-devel compatibility patch in February 2025.
What is sftime?
The spatiotemporal companion to sf, moving at the pace of the packages around it.
sftime extends sf with an active time column, giving R a data frame class for data that is both spatial and temporal. Its recent history is almost entirely integration work: 0.3.0 added conversion methods from spatstat point patterns, sftrack and sftraj movement objects and cubble data frames, plus dedicated tidyr::drop_na() and dplyr::dplyr_reconstruct() methods. The two releases since are a namespace version-check correction and a switch from the magrittr pipe to the native pipe in examples.
cfr vs sftime: editorial side-by-side
cfr
0.0ANALYTICS
cfr packaged delay-corrected severity estimation, then went quiet on maintenance.
◆ Current state
The package estimates disease severity and case ascertainment while correcting for the delay between a case being reported and its outcome being known. After the 0.1.1 rework of the estimation internals and a maintainer handover to Adam Kucharski, activity dropped to a vignette and an R-devel compatibility patch in February 2025.
◆ Where it's heading
The methodological work is done and consolidated: likelihood approximation is now selected automatically from outbreak size and an initial severity estimate, and the internals were renamed with a dot prefix to close the public surface down to cfr_static(), cfr_rolling() and the data-preparation generic. Releases since have been documentation and compatibility only.
◆ Prediction
The 0.1.0 notes flagged time-varying ascertainment as future work and it has not appeared in the two releases since; nothing in these entries indicates when or whether it lands.
sftime
0.0ANALYTICS
The spatiotemporal companion to sf, moving at the pace of the packages around it.
◆ Current state
sftime extends sf with an active time column, giving R a data frame class for data that is both spatial and temporal. Its recent history is almost entirely integration work: 0.3.0 added conversion methods from spatstat point patterns, sftrack and sftraj movement objects and cubble data frames, plus dedicated tidyr::drop_na() and dplyr::dplyr_reconstruct() methods. The two releases since are a namespace version-check correction and a switch from the magrittr pipe to the native pipe in examples.
◆ Where it's heading
The package's job is to be interoperable, so its releases follow whatever the surrounding spatial and tidyverse packages do. The dplyr_reconstruct() work is the clearest example of why that matters: inheriting sf's method caused column binding to silently return an sf object where an sftime object was expected, which is the kind of class-preservation bug that only surfaces two steps downstream. Development is sparse, roughly one release a year.
◆ Prediction
Expect further conversion methods as new spatiotemporal classes appear in the R spatial ecosystem, and continued tracking of dplyr and tidyr generics. The entries do not indicate any planned change to the sftime class itself.
Alternatives to cfr and sftime
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 cfr or sftime.
maplegend
The legend engine mapsf spun out, now covering legend types the parent map package can draw.
lang
R help pages translated on demand by whichever LLM you point it at.
mapsf
Thematic mapping in base R that finally got a theming system, then spent two years polishing legends.
qualtRics
qualtRics moved its contact functions onto XM Directory days before the old endpoints died.
fabletools
The tidyverts forecasting core rebuilt model combination on full residual covariance.
Recent activity from cfr and sftime
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agosftimeExamples switched to the native R pipe
- 11mo agosftimeFixes the cubble namespace version check
- 1y agocfrR-devel difftime patch and an individual-data vignette
- 1y agosftimeConverts from spatstat, sftrack and cubble objects
- 2y agocfrSeverity estimator picks its own likelihood approximation
- 2y agocfrDelay-corrected severity and ascertainment estimation on CRAN ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cfr and sftime?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. cfr and sftime 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 cfr better than sftime?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cfr and sftime 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 cfr?
Top cfr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cfr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cfr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to sftime?
Top sftime alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "sftime alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sftime for the full list with editorial commentary on each.