datefixR
The messy-date parser rewrote its core in Rust and came out 300x faster.
Comparison · Analytics
charlatan vs fellingdater
A side-by-side editorial comparison of charlatan and fellingdater — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-packageropensci
charlatan vs fellingdater: at a glance
What is charlatan?
R's fake-data generator rebuilt its provider hierarchy so contributors can add one locale without touching the rest.
charlatan generates realistic fake data — names, addresses, phone numbers, jobs, internet artefacts — across many locales, following the same model as faker in Python and Perl. The 0.6.1 release reworked the provider class hierarchy so locale-specific providers inherit from a parent, and 0.6.2 since has been a documentation rebuild that happened to surface a duplicate Norwegian phone number pattern. Activity is sparse and bursty.
What is fellingdater?
Went from estimating felling dates to doing the crossdating that produces them.
fellingdater estimates when a tree was felled from sapwood measurements, the core inference in dendrochronological dating of timber. Version 1.0.0 passed rOpenSci review with that scope, and the 2024 releases were mostly about the accompanying JOSS paper and user-supplied sapwood datasets. Version 1.2.0 changed the package's remit substantially, adding an entire trs_* family for tree-ring series handling: crossdating with multiple statistical measures, the Hollstein and Baillie-Pilcher t-value transformations, parallel variation percentages, synthetic series generation, and dated-series plotting.
charlatan vs fellingdater: editorial side-by-side
charlatan
0.0ANALYTICS
R's fake-data generator rebuilt its provider hierarchy so contributors can add one locale without touching the rest.
◆ Current state
charlatan generates realistic fake data — names, addresses, phone numbers, jobs, internet artefacts — across many locales, following the same model as faker in Python and Perl. The 0.6.1 release reworked the provider class hierarchy so locale-specific providers inherit from a parent, and 0.6.2 since has been a documentation rebuild that happened to surface a duplicate Norwegian phone number pattern. Activity is sparse and bursty.
◆ Where it's heading
The package's value scales with locale coverage, and its releases track that: early versions added data-type providers, middle versions added locales one contributor at a time, and 0.6.1 attacked the bottleneck by restructuring the class hierarchy so a locale can override a single function. Development has effectively been handed to contributors, with maintainer releases reduced to docs rebuilds and CRAN compliance.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next substantive release to be an accumulation of contributed locales and providers arriving through the new parent-provider structure, rather than maintainer-driven feature work.
fellingdater
0.0ANALYTICS
Went from estimating felling dates to doing the crossdating that produces them.
◆ Current state
fellingdater estimates when a tree was felled from sapwood measurements, the core inference in dendrochronological dating of timber. Version 1.0.0 passed rOpenSci review with that scope, and the 2024 releases were mostly about the accompanying JOSS paper and user-supplied sapwood datasets. Version 1.2.0 changed the package's remit substantially, adding an entire trs_* family for tree-ring series handling: crossdating with multiple statistical measures, the Hollstein and Baillie-Pilcher t-value transformations, parallel variation percentages, synthetic series generation, and dated-series plotting.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has expanded backwards along the workflow. It began at the last step — given dated series, estimate the felling date — and 1.2.0 added the step before it, establishing those dates by crossdating in the first place. Version 1.2.1 is early polish on that new surface: axis control, non-syntactic column names, encoding safety in read_fh(). The direction is a single package covering the chain from raw ring widths to a felling-date estimate.
◆ Prediction
Expect the trs_* family to keep accumulating polish and additional crossdating statistics, since it is barely a year old and 1.2.1 was already fixing its plotting and top_n behaviour. Whether the two halves of the package get unified into one workflow interface is the open question the entries do not answer.
Alternatives to charlatan and fellingdater
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 charlatan or fellingdater.
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.
See all charlatan alternatives → · See all fellingdater alternatives →
Recent activity from charlatan and fellingdater
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agofellingdaterPolish for the crossdating plots and file reader
- 7mo agocharlatanDocs rebuild surfaces a duplicate Norwegian phone pattern
- 1y agofellingdaterAdds a full crossdating and tree-ring analysis toolkit ⚡
- 1y agofellingdaterUser-supplied sapwood data works across all functions
- 1y agofellingdaterFixes fd_report() with user-defined sapwood files
- 1y agocharlatanProvider classes restructured so locales can override single functions ⚡
- 2y agofellingdaterJOSS paper accepted; citation updated
- 2y agofellingdaterAdds a workflow vignette ahead of JOSS submission
- 6y agocharlatanNew locales and providers; allowed_locales() added
- 7y agocharlatanLocale naming standardised; French and Danish data corrected
- 8y agocharlatancharlatan v0.2.2
- 8y agocharlatanSix new providers broaden charlatan beyond names and addresses
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between charlatan and fellingdater?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package, ropensci — within Analytics. charlatan and fellingdater 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 charlatan better than fellingdater?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. charlatan and fellingdater 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 charlatan?
Top charlatan alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "charlatan alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/charlatan for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to fellingdater?
Top fellingdater alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fellingdater alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fellingdater for the full list with editorial commentary on each.