nflreadr
The nflverse data loader, whose releases are dictated by the NFL calendar and CRAN's archive policy
Comparison · Analytics
condformat vs r-owidapi
A side-by-side editorial comparison of condformat and r-owidapi — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
condformat vs r-owidapi: at a glance
What is condformat?
A dormant table-formatting package woken by a 20-PR correctness and coverage sweep
condformat applies conditional formatting rules to R data frames and renders them to HTML, LaTeX, Excel and grob output. After 0.10.1 in 2023 it went quiet for nearly three years. Version 0.11.0 breaks that silence with a single-maintainer sweep of roughly twenty pull requests: CI modernized across R-devel, release and oldrel; lockcells fixed for LaTeX and grob output; a rule_fill_bar() crash at zero width; theme_htmlTable() no longer dropping chained arguments; and a .col pronoun added across all rules.
What is r-owidapi?
The R client for Our World in Data found its search had been reading a tenth of the catalog.
owidapi is a small R client for Our World in Data, covering chart data retrieval, metadata, the full chart catalog, and search over it, with experimental Shiny output helpers. It is three releases old and the most recent one is almost entirely repair: the catalog function was silently truncating at 1000 rows because of a Datasette row cap, which meant search had been operating on a fraction of what exists.
condformat vs r-owidapi: editorial side-by-side
condformat
0.0ANALYTICS
A dormant table-formatting package woken by a 20-PR correctness and coverage sweep
◆ Current state
condformat applies conditional formatting rules to R data frames and renders them to HTML, LaTeX, Excel and grob output. After 0.10.1 in 2023 it went quiet for nearly three years. Version 0.11.0 breaks that silence with a single-maintainer sweep of roughly twenty pull requests: CI modernized across R-devel, release and oldrel; lockcells fixed for LaTeX and grob output; a rule_fill_bar() crash at zero width; theme_htmlTable() no longer dropping chained arguments; and a .col pronoun added across all rules.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a maintenance-debt payoff rather than a change of direction. The bulk of 0.11.0 is test coverage — render_gtable, knit_print, theme_grob, render_xlsx and rule_fill_bar all gained tests — which reads as a maintainer establishing a safety net before touching anything further. The .col pronoun and scalar recycling in the text rules are the only real API additions, and both smooth inconsistencies rather than extend the rule vocabulary.
◆ Prediction
With coverage and CI now in place, the next release is more likely to extend rule or output-format support than to continue with fixes, though the three-year gap makes cadence hard to call from these entries alone.
r-owidapi
2.5ANALYTICS
The R client for Our World in Data found its search had been reading a tenth of the catalog.
◆ Current state
owidapi is a small R client for Our World in Data, covering chart data retrieval, metadata, the full chart catalog, and search over it, with experimental Shiny output helpers. It is three releases old and the most recent one is almost entirely repair: the catalog function was silently truncating at 1000 rows because of a Datasette row cap, which meant search had been operating on a fraction of what exists.
◆ Where it's heading
Development is about making a thin wrapper trustworthy against an upstream that moves without notice. The truncation fix pages through the catalog properly; a separate fix stops the function breaking when Our World in Data dropped a column, by parsing typed columns only when present. Tests moved to mocked responses, with a small live suite retained purely to detect schema drift and skipped on CRAN — a sensible design for a package whose main risk is that the API changes shape rather than that the code is wrong. The user-facing surface has not grown since the initial release; the work is in defending it.
◆ Prediction
On this pattern the next release is likelier to be another upstream-compatibility fix than new functionality, with the schema-drift tests the mechanism that surfaces it.
Alternatives to condformat and r-owidapi
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 condformat or r-owidapi.
susier
Fine-mapping workhorse susieR spends its releases hunting null-effect trimming bugs
UCell
A rank-based gene signature scorer that has grown by adapting to whatever object format single-cell R uses next
detectseparation
A diagnostic package that generalized past its own name, then learned to say which kind of separation it found
brglm2
A bias-reduction package reaches 1.0 by adding an estimator built for high-dimensional logistic regression
bayestools
The JAGS toolkit under RoBMA, shipping the standardization machinery its downstream rewrite needed
See all condformat alternatives → · See all r-owidapi alternatives →
Recent activity from condformat and r-owidapi
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 20d agor-owidapiCatalog was silently capped at 1000 charts; now paged in full
- 1mo agocondformatEnds a three-year gap with a 20-PR fix and coverage sweep
- 1y agor-owidapiRequest logic consolidated, with graceful catalog errors
- 1y agor-owidapiFirst release: data, metadata, catalog and search
- 2y agocondformatDocumentation fixes and internal S3 method registration
- 3y agocondformatcondformat2grob() gains a draw argument for composite figures
- 6y agocondformatDrops the lazyeval API and replaces xlsx with openxlsx
- 7y agocondformatAdds bar, bold and color rules plus grob rendering
- 8y agocondformatIntroduces the tidy-evaluation API alongside the old one
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between condformat and r-owidapi?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. r-owidapi is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is condformat better than r-owidapi?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. r-owidapi is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to condformat?
Top condformat alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "condformat alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/condformat for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to r-owidapi?
Top r-owidapi alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "r-owidapi alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/r-owidapi for the full list with editorial commentary on each.