simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
gghighlight vs tEDM
A side-by-side editorial comparison of gghighlight and tEDM — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
gghighlight vs tEDM: 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 tEDM?
The temporal half of the stscl EDM pair, tracking its spatial sibling
tEDM applies empirical dynamic modeling to time series — cross mapping, convergent cross mapping and the logistic map — as the temporal counterpart to spEDM, with which it shares a maintainer and a C++ core. The recent releases are consolidation rather than expansion: index handling in cross mapping corrected, generics taught to accept varying E, k and tau, and the associated paper now cited in the README. Only three releases are visible in the feed.
gghighlight vs tEDM: 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.
tEDM
0.0ANALYTICS
The temporal half of the stscl EDM pair, tracking its spatial sibling
◆ Current state
tEDM applies empirical dynamic modeling to time series — cross mapping, convergent cross mapping and the logistic map — as the temporal counterpart to spEDM, with which it shares a maintainer and a C++ core. The recent releases are consolidation rather than expansion: index handling in cross mapping corrected, generics taught to accept varying E, k and tau, and the associated paper now cited in the README. Only three releases are visible in the feed.
◆ Where it's heading
tEDM moves in lockstep with spEDM. Configurable distance metrics, varying E/k/tau inputs, strict floating-point comparison and the S3 plotting font unification all appear in both packages within days or weeks, as does the maintainer surname correction. The recent balance has tilted toward correcting library and prediction index handling — the kind of repeated attention that suggests the indexing model was the weak point of the shared core.
◆ Prediction
Expect tEDM to keep inheriting the shared-core changes spEDM lands, with its own releases staying small and centred on cross-mapping parameter handling rather than new method surface.
Alternatives to gghighlight and tEDM
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 tEDM.
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 tEDM alternatives →
Recent activity from gghighlight and tEDM
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agotEDMMaintainer name corrected, published paper cited
- 7mo agotEDMCross-mapping index handling corrected, generics accept varying E, k, tau
- 11mo agotEDMConfigurable distance metrics for cross mapping
- 1y agogghighlightggplot2 v4.0 support; geom-specific functions removed
- 2y agogghighlightTest expectations updated for upcoming ggplot2
- 3y agogghighlightline_label_type adds geomtextpath and second-axis labelling
- 4y agogghighlightDeprecated dplyr::across() usage removed
- 5y agogghighlightExplicit NULL in unhighlighted_params preserved; aesthetic name clash fixed
- 5y agogghighlightDiscrete-scale labels and n() predicates
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between gghighlight and tEDM?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. gghighlight and tEDM 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 tEDM?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. gghighlight and tEDM 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 tEDM?
Top tEDM alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tEDM alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tedm for the full list with editorial commentary on each.