parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
Comparison · Analytics
inbospatial vs tidytab
A side-by-side editorial comparison of inbospatial and tidytab — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
inbospatial vs tidytab: at a glance
What is inbospatial?
A thin R wrapper over Flemish geospatial services, adding one standard at a time
inbospatial gives R users direct access to Flemish and Belgian government spatial services without hand-writing request URLs. Three releases over three years have built it up service by service: WMS and WMTS tile shorthands and projection-distortion utilities first, then the Flanders digital elevation model, and now OGC API Features querying plus layer discovery for WCS services. Much of each release is hardening the MHT-file parsing that these services return.
What is tidytab?
A young tabulation helper whose first releases are all dependency modernisation
tidytab is a small R package for tidyverse-style tabulation, three releases into its public life. Nothing so far has added functionality: 0.2.0 fixed a cumulative-percentage calculation and moved to the base R pipe, and 0.3.0 swapped a retired purrr function for tidyr::expand_grid. The one substantive user-facing item in the history is the cumulative percentage fix.
inbospatial vs tidytab: editorial side-by-side
inbospatial
0.0ANALYTICS
A thin R wrapper over Flemish geospatial services, adding one standard at a time
◆ Current state
inbospatial gives R users direct access to Flemish and Belgian government spatial services without hand-writing request URLs. Three releases over three years have built it up service by service: WMS and WMTS tile shorthands and projection-distortion utilities first, then the Flanders digital elevation model, and now OGC API Features querying plus layer discovery for WCS services. Much of each release is hardening the MHT-file parsing that these services return.
◆ Where it's heading
The package grows by absorbing one more service standard per release rather than by adding abstraction. The 0.1.0 additions point the same way — get_feature_ogc() covers a newer OGC standard alongside the existing WCS and WFS paths, and get_wcs_layers() addresses the practical problem that you cannot query a coverage without first knowing what layers exist. Release cadence is slow and driven by which service the maintainers needed next.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to add another regional service endpoint or extend OGC API Features coverage, on a timescale of a year or more given the gaps between the three releases so far.
tidytab
0.0ANALYTICS
A young tabulation helper whose first releases are all dependency modernisation
◆ Current state
tidytab is a small R package for tidyverse-style tabulation, three releases into its public life. Nothing so far has added functionality: 0.2.0 fixed a cumulative-percentage calculation and moved to the base R pipe, and 0.3.0 swapped a retired purrr function for tidyr::expand_grid. The one substantive user-facing item in the history is the cumulative percentage fix.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being brought up to current tidyverse conventions by a wave of first-time contributors — six of them in 0.2.0 alone — rather than developed by a sustained maintainer effort. That makes the near-term direction predictable and narrow: retire deprecated idioms, keep CRAN checks clean. There is not yet enough history to say what the package intends to become.
◆ Prediction
With deprecated tidyselect and purrr usage now cleared, the remaining work of this kind is thin, so the next release will show whether the contributor interest converts into new tabulation features or the package settles at its current surface.
Alternatives to inbospatial and tidytab
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 inbospatial or tidytab.
cairo
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
rjdqa
rjdqa keeps refining one screen: the seasonal adjustment quality dashboard
epikit
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
See all inbospatial alternatives → · See all tidytab alternatives →
Recent activity from inbospatial and tidytab
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agoinbospatialOGC API Features querying and WCS layer discovery arrive
- 7mo agotidytabpurrr::cross2() replaced with tidyr::expand_grid()
- 8mo agotidytabCumulative percentage fixed; base pipe replaces magrittr
- 9mo agotidytabNEWS.md added to track changes
- 1y agoinbospatialFlanders digital elevation model becomes queryable
- 2y agoinbospatialWMS and WMTS shorthands plus projection distortion utilities
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between inbospatial and tidytab?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. inbospatial and tidytab 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 inbospatial better than tidytab?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. inbospatial and tidytab 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 inbospatial?
Top inbospatial alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "inbospatial alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/inbospatial for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to tidytab?
Top tidytab alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidytab alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidytab-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.