STACAS
Single-cell batch correction that learned to use cell labels, then spent three releases chasing Seurat.
Comparison · Analytics
lstar vs rempsyc
A side-by-side editorial comparison of lstar and rempsyc — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
lstar vs rempsyc: at a glance
What is lstar?
A single-cell data store commits to Zarr v3 and range-readable hosting across four language surfaces
lstar stores single-cell data behind one C++ core with Python, R and JS/WASM bindings, and ships a browser viewer that reads the store directly. Zarr v3 is now the default on-disk format across all four surfaces, with zstd compression and sharding that packs many chunks into fewer objects. Viewer stores are compressed per field and resolved at chunk granularity, so a hosted viewer fetches only what it displays. The tag stream carries both lstar and lstar-sc releases.
What is rempsyc?
Publication-ready psychology tables and plots, tracking APA style as closely as the software allows.
rempsyc produces APA-formatted tables and figures for psychology research — nice_table() for results tables, plus plotting helpers for scatter plots, violin plots, densities and simple slopes. Its releases are CRAN submissions that bundle a long run of development versions, so each entry reads as a digest rather than a single change. The most recent, 0.2.0, added point labelling and per-group correlation statistics to nice_scatter and fixed nice_lm() failing on factor covariates with more than two levels.
lstar vs rempsyc: editorial side-by-side
lstar
5.0ANALYTICS
A single-cell data store commits to Zarr v3 and range-readable hosting across four language surfaces
◆ Current state
lstar stores single-cell data behind one C++ core with Python, R and JS/WASM bindings, and ships a browser viewer that reads the store directly. Zarr v3 is now the default on-disk format across all four surfaces, with zstd compression and sharding that packs many chunks into fewer objects. Viewer stores are compressed per field and resolved at chunk granularity, so a hosted viewer fetches only what it displays. The tag stream carries both lstar and lstar-sc releases.
◆ Where it's heading
The through-line is making a hosted store cheap to read. Sharding addresses the file-per-chunk explosion that makes many-chunk arrays awkward to host; per-field compression with chunk-granular resolution means colouring an embedding by one gene fetches one column rather than an array. The 0.2.x patches are the cost of maintaining four surfaces at once — a WASM heap crash that only browsers exercise, and a count-basis orientation defect where all three surfaces normalized in memory and none owned the on-disk layout.
◆ Prediction
The orientation bug's root cause — no surface owning the on-disk representation while all three normalized in memory — is the kind of gap that usually produces a validation or ownership change rather than another point fix.
rempsyc
0.0ANALYTICS
Publication-ready psychology tables and plots, tracking APA style as closely as the software allows.
◆ Current state
rempsyc produces APA-formatted tables and figures for psychology research — nice_table() for results tables, plus plotting helpers for scatter plots, violin plots, densities and simple slopes. Its releases are CRAN submissions that bundle a long run of development versions, so each entry reads as a digest rather than a single change. The most recent, 0.2.0, added point labelling and per-group correlation statistics to nice_scatter and fixed nice_lm() failing on factor covariates with more than two levels.
◆ Where it's heading
Two forces drive this package and neither is its own roadmap. The first is APA style: when the 7th edition advised against beta for standardized coefficients, the package switched its output to italic b with an asterisk. The second is the surrounding ecosystem — formatting is aligned to what lavaanExtra and afex produce, contrast handling was delegated to easystats' modelbased, and Excel correlation matrix export was handed entirely to the correlation package to cut maintenance.
◆ Prediction
The pattern of delegating functionality to specialist packages while keeping the formatting layer is well established and likely continues. Because releases bundle many small dev versions, the next one will probably again mix plotting refinements with fixes surfaced by upstream changes.
Alternatives to lstar and rempsyc
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 lstar or rempsyc.
ggtrace
A debugger for ggplot2's internals, hardening its grip as the internals it traces keep moving.
kde1d
A univariate density estimator that added zero-inflated data and reopened its C++ API to do it.
svines
Stationary vine copulas for time series, released in lockstep with the rest of Nagler's vine stack.
gghighlight
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
rtrek
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
See all lstar alternatives → · See all rempsyc alternatives →
Recent activity from lstar and rempsyc
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 21d agolstarViewer count-basis orientation fixed; existing stores need re-prep
- 26d agolstarWASM viewer crash on resizable heaps fixed
- 1mo agolstarlstar 0.2.0 ⚡
- 1mo agolstarMeasure state inferred from content, not slot name
- 11mo agorempsycPoint labels and per-group correlations added to nice_scatter
- 1y agorempsycExcel correlation export delegated to the correlation package
- 2y agorempsycTable spacing control and a fix for name collision with afex
- 2y agorempsycStandardized coefficients switch to APA 7th edition b* notation
- 2y agorempsycLegend and standardization-check fixes
- 2y agorempsycnice_table starts coercing model objects automatically
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between lstar and rempsyc?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. lstar is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is lstar better than rempsyc?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. lstar is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to lstar?
Top lstar alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "lstar alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/lstar for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to rempsyc?
Top rempsyc alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rempsyc alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rempsyc for the full list with editorial commentary on each.