tidytlg
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
Comparison · Analytics
cloudml vs rlistings
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cloudml and rlistings — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
cloudml vs rlistings: at a glance
What is cloudml?
Six years since the last functional change, and Google renamed the service it wraps in the release before that
cloudml lets R users train keras, tfestimators and tensorflow models on Google's managed machine learning service, tune hyperparameters there, and deploy the results. Its last release with functional content was 0.6.1 in September 2019, which adapted to Google renaming the service from ml-engine to ai-platform. The only entry since is a 2025 documentation update made to satisfy CRAN.
What is rlistings?
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
rlistings renders clinical-trial subject listings and paginates them for regulatory output, sitting alongside rtables on the shared formatters engine. The releases in this window are dominated by pagination correctness: repeated key columns across pages, splitting by a variable, ordered-factor handling, column gaps, and font metrics. Development is a large rotating contributor set inside the insightsengineering organisation.
cloudml vs rlistings: editorial side-by-side
cloudml
0.0ANALYTICS
Six years since the last functional change, and Google renamed the service it wraps in the release before that
◆ Current state
cloudml lets R users train keras, tfestimators and tensorflow models on Google's managed machine learning service, tune hyperparameters there, and deploy the results. Its last release with functional content was 0.6.1 in September 2019, which adapted to Google renaming the service from ml-engine to ai-platform. The only entry since is a 2025 documentation update made to satisfy CRAN.
◆ Where it's heading
The visible arc is short and stops abruptly. Releases through 2018 tracked the TensorFlow runtime version and patched packaging problems; 0.6.1 added a customCommands hook so users could run OS-level setup before package installation, and adjusted to the service's new name. Then nothing for six years. A 2025 release containing only documentation changes is the standard signal of a package being kept on CRAN rather than being developed.
◆ Prediction
There is nothing in this feed to support a prediction of functional work. The most likely next event is another CRAN-driven documentation patch, or archival.
rlistings
0.0ANALYTICS
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
◆ Current state
rlistings renders clinical-trial subject listings and paginates them for regulatory output, sitting alongside rtables on the shared formatters engine. The releases in this window are dominated by pagination correctness: repeated key columns across pages, splitting by a variable, ordered-factor handling, column gaps, and font metrics. Development is a large rotating contributor set inside the insightsengineering organisation.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is progressively delegating pagination to formatters rather than implementing it — paginate_listing() was refactored to call formatters' paginate_to_mpfs() directly, and truetype font support arrived through a new formatters API. That reduces duplicated logic but ties the package's page-break behaviour to a dependency it shares with rtables. Feature work beyond pagination is thin: better error messages for unsupported column classes, a cheatsheet.
◆ Prediction
Expect pagination fidelity to remain the focus, with changes arriving as formatters exposes more of its layout machinery rather than as rlistings-native features.
Alternatives to cloudml and rlistings
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 cloudml or rlistings.
Tplyr
Tplyr made clinical summary tables explain where every number came from.
hoardr
A cache-directory helper that has shipped nothing but CRAN-triggered patches for seven years.
gigs
gigs redesigned its whole conversion API for rOpenSci, then spent three releases getting the docs to build.
riem
A weather-data client that keeps rewriting its HTTP layer while slowly tightening its API.
datasetjson
datasetjson rebuilt its object model to track the CDISC Dataset-JSON 1.1 schema.
See all cloudml alternatives → · See all rlistings alternatives →
Recent activity from cloudml and rlistings
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 0y agocloudmlDocumentation updated for CRAN
- 1y agorlistingsError and message handling for difftime and zero-row listings
- 1y agorlistingsTrueType font support and col_gap in pagination
- 2y agorlistingssplit_into_pages_by_var() and pagination moved onto formatters
- 6y agocloudmlai-platform command adopted; custom pre-install commands added
- 7y agocloudmlDefault runtime moves to TensorFlow 1.9
- 8y agocloudmlPatch for CRAN results and a packrat error
- 8y agocloudmlCloud training, GPU jobs, tuning and deployment from R
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cloudml and rlistings?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. cloudml and rlistings 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 cloudml better than rlistings?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cloudml and rlistings 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 cloudml?
Top cloudml alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cloudml alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cloudml for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to rlistings?
Top rlistings alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rlistings alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rlistings for the full list with editorial commentary on each.