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Comparison · Analytics
GDPuc vs vellumplot
A side-by-side editorial comparison of GDPuc and vellumplot — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
GDPuc vs vellumplot: at a glance
What is GDPuc?
A GDP unit converter that keeps widening which currencies and deflators it will accept
GDPuc converts GDP figures between currencies, base years and price bases, using World Bank conversion factors, and is used as a dependency inside the madrat/magclass modelling stack. The 1.6.x line introduced xCU as a unit — local currency of any country x — added arguments for non-default iso3c and year columns, and made the package work with madrat caching and region mappings. The most recent release fixes a bug in iso3c column selection.
What is vellumplot?
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
A new grammar of graphics built on the vellum vector engine, developing fast — ten releases in roughly three weeks — and now at its first tagged release. The distinguishing architectural claim is that the compiled plot is the scene, so a static export and an interactive widget cannot drift apart, and that it renders without a graphics device because vellum measures text itself. Accessibility is treated as a first-class output rather than an afterthought: tagged PDF with a navigable structure tree and alt text, a plot_lint() check, and colour-vision-deficiency simulation at render time.
GDPuc vs vellumplot: editorial side-by-side
GDPuc
0.0ANALYTICS
A GDP unit converter that keeps widening which currencies and deflators it will accept
◆ Current state
GDPuc converts GDP figures between currencies, base years and price bases, using World Bank conversion factors, and is used as a dependency inside the madrat/magclass modelling stack. The 1.6.x line introduced xCU as a unit — local currency of any country x — added arguments for non-default iso3c and year columns, and made the package work with madrat caching and region mappings. The most recent release fixes a bug in iso3c column selection.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is toward accepting messier inputs from more callers. Successive releases have relaxed assumptions the package originally made — that a year column exists, that column names follow a convention, that PPP data is available for every country — and each relaxation is driven by an integration rather than by an economics question. The one genuinely methodological addition is the CPI as an alternative deflator, which arrived in 1.0.0.
◆ Prediction
Conversion factors are versioned World Bank data and were last refreshed in 1.0.0, so a data update is the most likely content of the next substantive release, alongside continued fixes to the column-detection logic that has now produced bugs twice.
vellumplot
6.3ANALYTICS
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
◆ Current state
A new grammar of graphics built on the vellum vector engine, developing fast — ten releases in roughly three weeks — and now at its first tagged release. The distinguishing architectural claim is that the compiled plot is the scene, so a static export and an interactive widget cannot drift apart, and that it renders without a graphics device because vellum measures text itself. Accessibility is treated as a first-class output rather than an afterthought: tagged PDF with a navigable structure tree and alt text, a plot_lint() check, and colour-vision-deficiency simulation at render time.
◆ Where it's heading
The release sequence shows a grammar filling in ggplot2-parity features and specialist marks in parallel. Parity work landed as secondary axes, rich legend titles, and Sankey styling; the specialist end added categorical datashading, image marks, flow maps and edge bundling for dense graphs. Version 0.7.0 shows a willingness to break early — vsunburst() was removed outright in favour of one vhierarchy() constructor covering sunburst, icicle, treemap and circlepack — which is the right time to do it and suggests the API is still being consolidated toward fewer, more general constructors.
◆ Prediction
Expect more consolidation of near-duplicate constructors under type arguments and continued expansion of the declarative interactivity introduced in 0.7.0, now that the first tagged release has fixed a public API surface.
Alternatives to GDPuc and vellumplot
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 GDPuc or vellumplot.
geodist
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
errors
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
CMAQ
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
See all GDPuc alternatives → · See all vellumplot alternatives →
Recent activity from GDPuc and vellumplot
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 14d agovellumplotFirst tagged release: one spec compiles to PNG, SVG, tagged PDF and a widget ⚡
- 19d agovellumplotFlow maps and edge bundling for dense graph plots
- 25d agovellumplotvhierarchy() replaces vsunburst(); declarative interactivity arrives
- 26d agovellumplotSankey crossing minimisation and per-branch sunburst colouring
- 1mo agovellumplotSecondary axes land; rich legend titles stop clipping
- 1mo agovellumplotCategorical datashading in one call, plus image marks at data points
- 8mo agoGDPucFix iso3c column selection
- 8mo agoGDPucxCU unit introduced; madrat caching and region mappings supported
- 1y agoGDPucBetter column detection; magclass objects without years accepted
- 2y agoGDPucCPI added as an alternative deflator; constant euro conversion
- 3y agoGDPucSuggests field cleaned for CRAN compliance
- 3y agoGDPucCorrect conversion factors returned by return_cfs
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between GDPuc and vellumplot?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. vellumplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 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 GDPuc better than vellumplot?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellumplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 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 GDPuc?
Top GDPuc alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "GDPuc alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gdpuc-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vellumplot?
Top vellumplot alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellumplot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellumplot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.