parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of geos and stockplotr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The thin GEOS binding for R adds terra interop after three years of compiler triage
geos is a low-overhead R binding to the GEOS geometry engine, exposing predicates, overlays and spatial indexes with minimal copying. Version 0.2.5 accepts terra SpatVector objects directly, alongside fixes for zero-length memcpy and plotting of invalid geometries. The releases between 0.2.0 and 0.2.5 contain almost no feature work — they are responses to compiler warnings, sanitiser findings and CRAN check failures.
A stock-assessment plotting package is growing a table engine to match its figures.
stockplotr generates the figures and, since 0.8.0-beta, the tables that go into NOAA fisheries stock assessment reports. The 0.8.0 release swapped the table backend from flextable to gt and shipped table_landings() as the first table function; 0.9.0 exported it with an interface deliberately mirroring the plot functions. Alongside that, convert_output() moved in from the sister package asar so model output is standardized here rather than upstream.
geos is a low-overhead R binding to the GEOS geometry engine, exposing predicates, overlays and spatial indexes with minimal copying. Version 0.2.5 accepts terra SpatVector objects directly, alongside fixes for zero-length memcpy and plotting of invalid geometries. The releases between 0.2.0 and 0.2.5 contain almost no feature work — they are responses to compiler warnings, sanitiser findings and CRAN check failures.
Feature development stopped after 0.2.0 and the package has since been kept alive against a moving toolchain: strict-prototypes warnings, a clang sanitiser error, format string checks, an M1 test failure. The 0.2.5 terra support breaks that pattern and came from an outside contributor, which suggests the package's direction is now set by what neighbouring spatial packages need from it rather than by GEOS feature coverage.
GEOS has released new capabilities since the 3.11 features wired up in 0.2.0, and none have been exposed since; whether the next release closes that gap or continues as interop-and-maintenance is the open question the history does not yet answer.
stockplotr generates the figures and, since 0.8.0-beta, the tables that go into NOAA fisheries stock assessment reports. The 0.8.0 release swapped the table backend from flextable to gt and shipped table_landings() as the first table function; 0.9.0 exported it with an interface deliberately mirroring the plot functions. Alongside that, convert_output() moved in from the sister package asar so model output is standardized here rather than upstream.
The package is consolidating the whole report-artifact pipeline in one place: standardize model output, then emit both figures and tables from the same long-format frame. Pulling convert_output() out of asar because stockplotr depended on it more heavily is the clearest signal of where the center of gravity now sits. Everything is still tagged beta, and the plot function count is growing faster than the table one.
More table_* functions built on the gt foundation are the obvious next step, matching the existing plot_* set; the 0.9.0 notes describe table_landings() as the first of a revamped family rather than a one-off.
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 geos or stockplotr.
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
rjdqa keeps refining one screen: the seasonal adjustment quality dashboard
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
See all geos alternatives → · See all stockplotr alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. geos and stockplotr 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. geos and stockplotr 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 geos alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "geos alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/geos-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top stockplotr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "stockplotr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/stockplotr-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.