tidytlg
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
Comparison · Analytics
excluder vs r2rtf
A side-by-side editorial comparison of excluder and r2rtf — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
excluder vs r2rtf: at a glance
What is excluder?
A Qualtrics data-cleaning package that has been in maintenance mode since its CRAN acceptance.
excluder marks, checks, and excludes online-survey rows that fail quality criteria — duplicate responses, suspicious IP or geolocation, screen resolution, completion duration, preview rows. The mark_*/check_*/exclude_* verb trio and the column-renaming helpers are the whole public surface. Recent releases are dependency chasing and test robustness rather than new exclusion criteria.
What is r2rtf?
The clinical-report table engine learned Chinese, then learned to leave RTF entirely
r2rtf builds the RTF tables, listings and figures that go into clinical study reports, and its recent releases have been about widening who and what it can serve rather than changing how tables are composed. The 1.2.0 release added internationalization — a SimSun font path for Chinese characters plus hyphenation control — and 1.3.0 followed with write_docx() and write_html(), turning the LibreOffice conversion the package had documented into exported functions.
excluder vs r2rtf: editorial side-by-side
excluder
0.0ANALYTICS
A Qualtrics data-cleaning package that has been in maintenance mode since its CRAN acceptance.
◆ Current state
excluder marks, checks, and excludes online-survey rows that fail quality criteria — duplicate responses, suspicious IP or geolocation, screen resolution, completion duration, preview rows. The mark_*/check_*/exclude_* verb trio and the column-renaming helpers are the whole public surface. Recent releases are dependency chasing and test robustness rather than new exclusion criteria.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is stable and its maintenance load comes from things it does not control: the {iptools} package leaving CRAN, {tidyselect} deprecating the .data pronoun, IP-geolocation tests breaking when the underlying address data shifts. Much of that work is about staying installable, not about better exclusions. Note that several of these entries were backfilled into the feed within the same two-minute window and are not in version order.
◆ Prediction
The next release will most likely be another dependency or CRAN-check response rather than a new exclusion criterion, following the pattern of the last three.
r2rtf
0.0ANALYTICS
The clinical-report table engine learned Chinese, then learned to leave RTF entirely
◆ Current state
r2rtf builds the RTF tables, listings and figures that go into clinical study reports, and its recent releases have been about widening who and what it can serve rather than changing how tables are composed. The 1.2.0 release added internationalization — a SimSun font path for Chinese characters plus hyphenation control — and 1.3.0 followed with write_docx() and write_html(), turning the LibreOffice conversion the package had documented into exported functions.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the window. One is output reach: RTF remains the composition target, but the artifacts that come out of it now include DOCX and HTML, and page numbering can be made table-relative across multi-page tables. The other is durability under a moving R and font stack — the ANSI/Unicode converter was rebuilt, the LaTeX mapping table generated from code rather than shipped as sysdata, unlist() usage fixed for R 4.5, and graphics-device leaks that produced stray Rplots.pdf closed off.
◆ Prediction
Having exported DOCX and HTML conversion, the likely next step is filling in what those formats lose relative to RTF — pagination and footnote fidelity are the obvious gaps. The i18n path currently covers Chinese only, so additional font families are the other plausible direction.
Alternatives to excluder and r2rtf
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 excluder or r2rtf.
Tplyr
Tplyr made clinical summary tables explain where every number came from.
rlistings
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
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.
See all excluder alternatives → · See all r2rtf alternatives →
Recent activity from excluder and r2rtf
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 7mo agor2rtfDOCX and HTML output become exported functions
- 11mo agor2rtfChinese character support arrives via an i18n font path ⚡
- 1y agoexcluderInternet-dependent tests and examples made conditional
- 1y agor2rtfText colour fixed for figures encoded into RTF
- 1y agor2rtfFootnote handling fixed for R 4.5.0
- 1y agor2rtfUnicode converter rebuilt and mapping table made inspectable
- 2y agoexcluderqualtrics_fetch2 dataset and tidyselect deprecation fixes
- 2y agor2rtfUTF-8 conversion fix and LibreOffice 7.6 support
- 3y agoexcluderCRAN acceptance and graceful IP-lookup failure
- 3y agoexcluderdplyr 1.0.8 across()/is.na() compatibility fix
- 3y agoexcluderuse_labels(), rename_columns(), and orientation-agnostic resolution
- 3y agoexcluderSwaps iptools for ipaddress
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between excluder and r2rtf?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. excluder and r2rtf 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 excluder better than r2rtf?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. excluder and r2rtf 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 excluder?
Top excluder alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "excluder alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/excluder for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to r2rtf?
Top r2rtf alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "r2rtf alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/r2rtf for the full list with editorial commentary on each.