vcfR
A genomics workhorse whose visible release feed stops dead in mid-2020.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
ggVennDiagram vs plume
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggVennDiagram and plume — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
ggVennDiagram vs plume: at a glance
What is ggVennDiagram?
A Venn diagram package whose public release notes say almost nothing — including about its copyright cleanup.
ggVennDiagram draws Venn diagrams as ggplot2 objects. The visible release feed is thin and irregular: three entries between 2021 and 2024, two of which contain nothing but a pointer to NEWS. Only the most recent, V1.5, describes actual changes, and both of them are legal housekeeping rather than features.
What is plume?
A niche R package for author bylines that keeps sanding down the edges of academic metadata.
plume builds author lists, affiliations, and CRediT contribution statements for R Markdown and Quarto documents. After a long stretch of small correctness releases through 2024, 0.3.0 in September 2025 broke the pattern with the largest feature batch since 0.2.0 — plain-function constructors, configurable symbols, and finer control over initials. The package covers one narrow job and covers it thoroughly.
ggVennDiagram vs plume: editorial side-by-side
ggVennDiagram
0.0INFRA · APIS
A Venn diagram package whose public release notes say almost nothing — including about its copyright cleanup.
◆ Current state
ggVennDiagram draws Venn diagrams as ggplot2 objects. The visible release feed is thin and irregular: three entries between 2021 and 2024, two of which contain nothing but a pointer to NEWS. Only the most recent, V1.5, describes actual changes, and both of them are legal housekeeping rather than features.
◆ Where it's heading
What can be read here is not a feature direction but a tidying of provenance. V1.5 removed code copied from yulab.utils and made the package comply with the copyright terms of the venn package it draws on, with the yulab.utils maintainer appearing as a first-time contributor to do it. Everything else in the window defers to a changelog kept outside the feed, so the direction of the package itself is not readable from these entries.
◆ Prediction
No reliable prediction is available from this feed — the release notes are pointers rather than descriptions, and the visible entries skip whole version ranges.
plume
0.0INFRA · APIS
A niche R package for author bylines that keeps sanding down the edges of academic metadata.
◆ Current state
plume builds author lists, affiliations, and CRediT contribution statements for R Markdown and Quarto documents. After a long stretch of small correctness releases through 2024, 0.3.0 in September 2025 broke the pattern with the largest feature batch since 0.2.0 — plain-function constructors, configurable symbols, and finer control over initials. The package covers one narrow job and covers it thoroughly.
◆ Where it's heading
The release history reads as a slow campaign against edge cases in a domain full of them: authors with no roles, non-cased scripts, duplicate family names, YAML headers containing comments the writer must not destroy. Over 2024 nearly every release was a fix or a small parameter refinement, with PlumeQuarto steadily catching up to Quarto's own author schema. 0.3.0 shows the maintainer beginning to smooth the API itself rather than only its behaviour — aliases for the R6 constructors, deprecations moved to where they belong.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued tracking of Quarto's author-metadata schema as it changes upstream, and more API smoothing of the kind 0.3.0 started; the ORCID icon regression caused by Quarto's path resolution suggests upstream churn will keep setting the agenda.
Alternatives to ggVennDiagram and plume
Other Infra & APIs 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 ggVennDiagram or plume.
dialr
The R phone-number package stopped only parsing numbers and started asking them where they are.
ordinalsimr
A Shiny app for choosing the right ordinal test reached CRAN in a single 90-minute burst of tags.
transltr
A new R localization package that reached CRAN and immediately downgraded itself to experimental.
hereR
An R client for HERE's location APIs, shaped almost entirely by what the vendor exposes next.
funcharts
One paper, one release: the functional control chart package ships methods as they get published.
See all ggVennDiagram alternatives → · See all plume alternatives →
Recent activity from ggVennDiagram and plume
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 10mo agoplumeFunction constructors, configurable symbols, and disambiguated initials
- 1y agoplumeQuarto author schema coverage: degrees, group affiliations, .yaml files
- 2y agoplumeVignette expansion and a selection-helper import fix
- 2y agoplumeRole propagation in set_main_contributors, plus script-aware initials
- 2y agoggVennDiagramCopied code removed and venn copyright terms satisfied
- 2y agoplumeto_yaml stops clobbering headers with comments and custom tags
- 2y agoggVennDiagramCRAN release 1.4.9
- 2y agoplumeCRediT author ordering fixed; format deprecated for suffix
- 5y agoggVennDiagramCRAN release v1.1.4
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ggVennDiagram and plume?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. ggVennDiagram and plume 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 ggVennDiagram better than plume?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. ggVennDiagram and plume 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ggVennDiagram?
Top ggVennDiagram alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggVennDiagram alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggvenndiagram for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to plume?
Top plume alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "plume alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/plume for the full list with editorial commentary on each.