simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
gratia vs rtrek
A side-by-side editorial comparison of gratia and rtrek — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
gratia vs rtrek: at a glance
What is gratia?
The tidy front-end for GAMs, now stable enough that upstream ggplot2 sets its release calendar.
gratia wraps mgcv-fitted generalized additive models in tidy data frames and ggplot2 graphics — smooth_estimates(), fitted_values(), derivatives(), draw() and appraise() cover evaluation, prediction and diagnostics. The API reached its intended shape at 0.9.0, when every generated column was renamed to a dot-prefixed form, and 0.10.0 added conditional_values() for covariate-conditional prediction plots.
What is rtrek?
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
rtrek bundles Star Trek datasets — book series, timelines, episode transcripts, species and homeworlds, map tile sets — and layers live retrieval on top through memory_alpha() and memory_beta() plus their ma_* and mb_* helpers. Recent releases are almost entirely repairs to that retrieval layer as the source wikis change their page structure.
gratia vs rtrek: editorial side-by-side
gratia
0.0ANALYTICS
The tidy front-end for GAMs, now stable enough that upstream ggplot2 sets its release calendar.
◆ Current state
gratia wraps mgcv-fitted generalized additive models in tidy data frames and ggplot2 graphics — smooth_estimates(), fitted_values(), derivatives(), draw() and appraise() cover evaluation, prediction and diagnostics. The API reached its intended shape at 0.9.0, when every generated column was renamed to a dot-prefixed form, and 0.10.0 added conditional_values() for covariate-conditional prediction plots.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has moved through a long rewrite cycle and out the other side. Successive releases replaced evaluate_smooth() with smooth_estimates(), rebuilt draw() on top of it, then renamed the entire output vocabulary to avoid colliding with user variables. That work is finished; 0.11.1 is driven almost entirely by ggplot2 4.0.0 compatibility, with new mgcv family support for quantile residuals riding along. Development now tracks upstream breakage rather than internal redesign.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next releases to continue absorbing ggplot2 4.x and mgcv changes, with incremental family coverage in quantile_residuals() as the visible new work. The entries give no signal on which mgcv families come next.
rtrek
0.0ANALYTICS
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
◆ Current state
rtrek bundles Star Trek datasets — book series, timelines, episode transcripts, species and homeworlds, map tile sets — and layers live retrieval on top through memory_alpha() and memory_beta() plus their ma_* and mb_* helpers. Recent releases are almost entirely repairs to that retrieval layer as the source wikis change their page structure.
◆ Where it's heading
The package's centre of gravity shifted once, at 0.2.0, from shipping static data to querying Memory Alpha and Memory Beta at runtime. Everything since has been the maintenance bill for that decision: HTML update fixes, parser improvements, portal retrieval bugs. Note that version numbers on this feed do not track time — 0.2.5 is stamped a year before 0.1.0, and three tags were backfilled within four minutes in November 2020 — so neither rank nor version ordering here indicates release sequence.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to fix retrieval against another Memory Alpha layout change, which is what the last four have done. The entries give no indication of new datasets or functions in progress.
Alternatives to gratia and rtrek
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 gratia or rtrek.
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 gratia alternatives → · See all rtrek alternatives →
Recent activity from gratia and rtrek
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11mo agogratiaggplot2 4.0.0 compatibility, plus four more quantile-residual families
- 1y agortrekMemory Alpha series portal retrieval fix
- 1y agogratiaconditional_values() replaces vis.gam for conditional prediction plots
- 1y agortrekrtrek 0.5.1 release
- 2y agortrekParser improvements for wiki retrieval
- 2y agogratiaparametric_effects() joins the dot-prefix rename; LSS families begin
- 2y agogratiaEvery generated column gains a dot prefix ⚡
- 2y agortrekDead external content and data dependencies removed
- 3y agogratiaReal variable names in smooth_samples(), plus dplyr 1.1.0 fixes
- 4y agogratiaM1 example output fixes and confint tibble returns
- 5y agortrekFixes for source website HTML changes
- 5y agortrekMemory Alpha and Memory Beta web APIs added ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between gratia and rtrek?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. gratia and rtrek 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 gratia better than rtrek?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. gratia and rtrek 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 gratia?
Top gratia alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "gratia alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gratia for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to rtrek?
Top rtrek alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rtrek alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rtrek for the full list with editorial commentary on each.