simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
gghighlight vs simmer.plot
A side-by-side editorial comparison of gghighlight and simmer.plot — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:ggplot2upstream-compatr-package
gghighlight vs simmer.plot: at a glance
What is gghighlight?
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
gghighlight adds one verb to ggplot2: highlight the series matching a predicate and grey out the rest, with unhighlighted_params controlling how the shadowed layer renders and calculate_per_facet deciding whether the predicate evaluates within facets. The API settled at 0.2.0; the 0.5.0 release supports ggplot2 v4.0 including its ink and paper theme elements, and finally deletes gghighlight_point() and gghighlight_line().
What is simmer.plot?
The plotting companion to simmer, shipping only when the simulator or a graphics dependency moves.
simmer.plot renders discrete-event simulation output — S3 plot() methods over get_mon_arrivals(), get_mon_attributes() and get_mon_resources(), plus trajectory diagrams drawn through DiagrammeR. Since 0.1.12 the methods attach to the monitoring data itself rather than the simulation environment, and 0.1.18 finished that migration by deleting the deprecated environment-level methods.
gghighlight vs simmer.plot: editorial side-by-side
gghighlight
0.0ANALYTICS
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
◆ Current state
gghighlight adds one verb to ggplot2: highlight the series matching a predicate and grey out the rest, with unhighlighted_params controlling how the shadowed layer renders and calculate_per_facet deciding whether the predicate evaluates within facets. The API settled at 0.2.0; the 0.5.0 release supports ggplot2 v4.0 including its ink and paper theme elements, and finally deletes gghighlight_point() and gghighlight_line().
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the history. One is a slow deprecation, from soft-deprecating the geom-specific functions at 0.1.0, to defunct at 0.3.0, to removed at 0.5.0 — a five-year removal cycle. The other is compatibility work: purrr 1.0.0, dplyr's across() deprecation, ggplot2 3.4.0, then 4.0. Genuine feature additions are rare and small, with line_label_type at 0.4.0 the last one. Note that 0.3.2's notes restate 0.3.1's n() item, so adjacent tags here overlap rather than each describing distinct work.
◆ Prediction
The next release most likely absorbs further ggplot2 4.x changes, given that is what triggered the last three. Nothing in the entries points to a new highlighting capability.
simmer.plot
0.0ANALYTICS
The plotting companion to simmer, shipping only when the simulator or a graphics dependency moves.
◆ Current state
simmer.plot renders discrete-event simulation output — S3 plot() methods over get_mon_arrivals(), get_mon_attributes() and get_mon_resources(), plus trajectory diagrams drawn through DiagrammeR. Since 0.1.12 the methods attach to the monitoring data itself rather than the simulation environment, and 0.1.18 finished that migration by deleting the deprecated environment-level methods.
◆ Where it's heading
This package moves when something it depends on moves. Its history is a sequence of parser fixes for new simmer trajectory formats, DiagrammeR and tidyr and dplyr version bumps, and ggplot2 workarounds. The one clear internal decision — plotting monitor output instead of the environment — was made in 2017 and completed six years later. The 2025 release fixes documentation cross-references and nothing else.
◆ Prediction
The next release most likely follows a simmer trajectory-format change or a CRAN documentation policy, matching every recent entry. There is no visible feature work in the pipeline.
Alternatives to gghighlight and simmer.plot
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 gghighlight or simmer.plot.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
See all gghighlight alternatives → · See all simmer.plot alternatives →
Recent activity from gghighlight and simmer.plot
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1y agosimmer.plotDocumentation cross-reference fixes
- 1y agogghighlightggplot2 v4.0 support; geom-specific functions removed
- 2y agogghighlightTest expectations updated for upcoming ggplot2
- 3y agosimmer.plotActivity tags and named rollbacks; deprecated plot methods removed
- 3y agogghighlightline_label_type adds geomtextpath and second-axis labelling
- 4y agogghighlightDeprecated dplyr::across() usage removed
- 4y agosimmer.plotZero-capacity utilization fixed; usage limits exposed
- 5y agogghighlightExplicit NULL in unhighlighted_params preserved; aesthetic name clash fixed
- 5y agogghighlightDiscrete-scale labels and n() predicates
- 6y agosimmer.plotRollback pointer fix and upstream bug workarounds
- 8y agosimmer.plotResource plot factors keep the supplied order
- 8y agosimmer.plotUpdate for DiagrammeR 1.0.0
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between gghighlight and simmer.plot?
Both compete on the same themes — ggplot2, upstream-compat, r-package — within Analytics. gghighlight and simmer.plot 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 gghighlight better than simmer.plot?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. gghighlight and simmer.plot 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 gghighlight?
Top gghighlight alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "gghighlight alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gghighlight for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to simmer.plot?
Top simmer.plot alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "simmer.plot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/simmer-plot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.