poissonreg
poissonreg gave its models away to parsnip and kept the glue — now it just keeps glmnet honest.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of fabletools and webchem — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The tidyverts forecasting core rebuilt model combination on full residual covariance.
fabletools is the framework layer under fable and fpp3 — mables, fables, accuracy measures, reconciliation, and the model arithmetic that lets forecasters express ensembles as expressions. Version 0.8.0 reworked that arithmetic: combination now uses a joint N-way convolution accounting for the full residual covariance across components rather than composing pairwise, and every arithmetic operator collapses to a single model_combination with correctly implied weights, so nested expressions like ((m1 + m2)/2 + m3)/2 flatten automatically. In parallel, the package has been shedding graphics to {ggtime} on a deliberately slow deprecation clock.
Adding chemical databases with one hand while public ones close programmatic access with the other.
webchem is the R interface to public chemical data — retrieving identifiers, properties and structures across roughly a dozen web services. Its release history reads as a running account of which of those services still allow automated access. Version 1.3.0 removed two functions outright because their sources withdrew: ChemIDplus was retired by the NLM, and PAN stopped supporting programmatic access. Version 1.3.1 continues the pattern, updating URLs that stopped working and noting that ChemSpider InChIKey validation now requires an API key like the rest of that provider's endpoints.
fabletools is the framework layer under fable and fpp3 — mables, fables, accuracy measures, reconciliation, and the model arithmetic that lets forecasters express ensembles as expressions. Version 0.8.0 reworked that arithmetic: combination now uses a joint N-way convolution accounting for the full residual covariance across components rather than composing pairwise, and every arithmetic operator collapses to a single model_combination with correctly implied weights, so nested expressions like ((m1 + m2)/2 + m3)/2 flatten automatically. In parallel, the package has been shedding graphics to {ggtime} on a deliberately slow deprecation clock.
The framework is being narrowed and deepened at the same time. Narrowed, because plotting is moving out to a dedicated package over an announced two-year deprecation, leaving fabletools to modeling infrastructure. Deepened, because the recent statistical work targets correctness in places users could not easily inspect — combination weights, inverse-variance weighting computed on response rather than innovation residuals, reconciliation coherency matrices exposed via coherent_smat() and coherent_cmat(). Class hygiene follows the same instinct, with mdl_lst replacing lst_mdl and gaining augment(), glance(), and tidy() so global and reconciliation models report statistics like any other.
With combination and reconciliation infrastructure freshly reworked, the remaining announced work is the ggtime separation, so expect the graphics re-exports to keep degrading toward removal while modeling changes stay incremental.
webchem is the R interface to public chemical data — retrieving identifiers, properties and structures across roughly a dozen web services. Its release history reads as a running account of which of those services still allow automated access. Version 1.3.0 removed two functions outright because their sources withdrew: ChemIDplus was retired by the NLM, and PAN stopped supporting programmatic access. Version 1.3.1 continues the pattern, updating URLs that stopped working and noting that ChemSpider InChIKey validation now requires an API key like the rest of that provider's endpoints.
Two opposing forces run through these entries. The package keeps widening its coverage — ChEMBL in 1.2.0, LIPID MAPS and SwissLipids identifiers via Wikidata, structure images, Mol export — while the open, unauthenticated end of the chemical web keeps contracting. The other consistent thread is interface harmonisation: successive releases have converged the get_* functions on the same query and from arguments, tibble returns, and CAS reformatting, so the package feels like one interface rather than a dozen wrappers.
Expect further defunct functions and URL repairs as more providers move behind keys or shut down, alongside occasional additions of sources that remain open. The entries show no sign of a general credential-management layer, which is what a package facing this trend would eventually need.
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 fabletools or webchem.
poissonreg gave its models away to parsnip and kept the glue — now it just keeps glmnet honest.
S7 has stopped adding surface and started proving it holds up against R itself.
R's torchvision is porting PyTorch's vision stack one task at a time — instance segmentation just landed.
The messy-date parser rewrote its core in Rust and came out 300x faster.
The legend engine mapsf spun out, now covering legend types the parent map package can draw.
R help pages translated on demand by whichever LLM you point it at.
See all fabletools alternatives → · See all webchem alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. fabletools and webchem 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. fabletools and webchem 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.
Top fabletools alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fabletools alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fabletools for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top webchem alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "webchem alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/webchem for the full list with editorial commentary on each.