STACAS
Single-cell batch correction that learned to use cell labels, then spent three releases chasing Seurat.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of incase and nswgeo — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
A safer case_when that keeps hardening its guarantees while realigning to tidyverse naming.
incase supplies in_case(), switch_case(), grep_case() and fn_case() as vectorised recoding functions in the dplyr::case_when idiom, with _fct and _list variants that return factors or lists instead of forcing atomic type conversion. The 0.4.0 release deprecates the undotted preserve, default and ordered arguments in favour of dotted forms, starting a removal clock, and adds .exhaustive to error on unmatched inputs.
NSW boundary data for R, refreshed as the official sources move
nswgeo packages New South Wales geographic boundaries for R — suburbs, postcodes, local government areas, Primary Health Networks and Local Health Districts — as ready-to-plot sf datasets. The 0.6.0 release refreshes nearly all of them against new upstream sources, moving postcodes to 2021 ABS boundaries and taking LHD boundaries from a new official feed. It is maintained by cidm-ph alongside the mapping packages that consume it, including ggmapinset.
incase supplies in_case(), switch_case(), grep_case() and fn_case() as vectorised recoding functions in the dplyr::case_when idiom, with _fct and _list variants that return factors or lists instead of forcing atomic type conversion. The 0.4.0 release deprecates the undotted preserve, default and ordered arguments in favour of dotted forms, starting a removal clock, and adds .exhaustive to error on unmatched inputs.
The arc is consistently toward catching recoding mistakes at the call site rather than letting them pass silently. Early releases broadened how a match can be expressed — pattern matching, function application, factor and list returns. Recent work has shifted to guarantees about the result: correct factor level ordering relative to .default, and now an exhaustiveness check. Notably 0.4.0 reverses the 0.3.2 decision to accept arguments with or without dots, trading that flexibility for namespace safety against user-supplied case names.
The deprecation warnings introduced in 0.4.0 point to a follow-up release that removes the undotted arguments outright. Whether .exhaustive eventually becomes the default is unclear from these entries.
nswgeo packages New South Wales geographic boundaries for R — suburbs, postcodes, local government areas, Primary Health Networks and Local Health Districts — as ready-to-plot sf datasets. The 0.6.0 release refreshes nearly all of them against new upstream sources, moving postcodes to 2021 ABS boundaries and taking LHD boundaries from a new official feed. It is maintained by cidm-ph alongside the mapping packages that consume it, including ggmapinset.
Every release is dictated by an upstream release calendar rather than a roadmap: the 2023 ASGS, then 2024, then the 2021 ABS postcode boundaries and the new LHD source. That makes field-name churn the package's defining hazard — LGA_NAME_2021 to LGA_NAME_2023 to LGA_NAME_2024, and now lhd_name carrying a Local Health District suffix. The maintainer's habit of registering compatibility aliases through cartographer shows an awareness that these renames break downstream code silently.
Expect the next release to track the following ASGS edition with another round of field renames, and any new content to stay in the health-geography area the package's users work in.
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 incase or nswgeo.
Single-cell batch correction that learned to use cell labels, then spent three releases chasing Seurat.
A debugger for ggplot2's internals, hardening its grip as the internals it traces keep moving.
A univariate density estimator that added zero-inflated data and reopened its C++ API to do it.
Stationary vine copulas for time series, released in lockstep with the rest of Nagler's vine stack.
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
See all incase alternatives → · See all nswgeo alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. incase and nswgeo 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. incase and nswgeo 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.
Top incase alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "incase alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/incase for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top nswgeo alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "nswgeo alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/nswgeo for the full list with editorial commentary on each.