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mapSpain vs weird

A side-by-side editorial comparison of mapSpain and weird — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

Shared themes:r-package

mapSpain vs weird: at a glance

FeaturemapSpainweird
SectorAnalyticsAnalytics
Velocity score0.00.0
Sparks · 30d00
Top themesspain, administrative-boundaries, geospatial, httr2anomaly-detection, r-package, distributional, robust-statistics
Last editorial update1h ago46m ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is mapSpain?

mapSpain's 1.0.0 broke every user cache to get the package onto modern foundations.

mapSpain provides administrative boundaries, tile providers and geographic dictionaries for Spain, pulling from GISCO, SIANE, INE and IGN sources. The 1.0.0 release in January 2026 rebuilt it: requests moved to httr2, the cache reorganized into topic-based subfolders under tools::R_user_dir() instead of rappdirs, R 4.1 became the floor, and every function now returns tidy objects. Existing caches are explicitly incompatible and must be rebuilt.

Read the full mapSpain trajectory →

What is weird?

weird rebuilt itself on distributional objects, and now the anomaly tooling composes with everything else.

An R package for anomaly detection and unusual-observation diagnostics, at four releases with a long gap between the 2024 patch and the 2026 major line. The current shape is set by 2.0.0, which refactored the package onto distributional objects and renamed its central concept from density_scores() to surprisals(). Since then the work has been filling that structure in: surprisals for more model classes, faster bandwidth and probability calculations, and new visual diagnostics.

Read the full weird trajectory →

mapSpain vs weird: editorial side-by-side

M
mapSpain
ANALYTICS
0.0

mapSpain's 1.0.0 broke every user cache to get the package onto modern foundations.

◆ Current state

mapSpain provides administrative boundaries, tile providers and geographic dictionaries for Spain, pulling from GISCO, SIANE, INE and IGN sources. The 1.0.0 release in January 2026 rebuilt it: requests moved to httr2, the cache reorganized into topic-based subfolders under tools::R_user_dir() instead of rappdirs, R 4.1 became the floor, and every function now returns tidy objects. Existing caches are explicitly incompatible and must be rebuilt.

◆ Where it's heading

The package has finished its modernization and moved into consolidation. 1.1.0 added a configurable query timeout and pinned httr2 for compatibility with giscoR, the sibling package it shares plumbing with; 1.2.0 was a declared internal-only refactor with the public API held fixed and the work described as AI-assisted with human review. The data-source expansion that characterized the 0.9.x and 0.10.x line — comarcas by type, simplified INE geometries, SIANE vintages — has paused while the foundations settle.

◆ Prediction

Expect a return to source coverage now that the refactor is done: new SIANE or INE vintages and additional boundary types are the pattern this package has repeated. The entries show no further architectural work queued.

W
weird
ANALYTICS
0.0

weird rebuilt itself on distributional objects, and now the anomaly tooling composes with everything else.

◆ Current state

An R package for anomaly detection and unusual-observation diagnostics, at four releases with a long gap between the 2024 patch and the 2026 major line. The current shape is set by 2.0.0, which refactored the package onto distributional objects and renamed its central concept from density_scores() to surprisals(). Since then the work has been filling that structure in: surprisals for more model classes, faster bandwidth and probability calculations, and new visual diagnostics.

◆ Where it's heading

The refactor onto a shared distribution representation is the decision everything else follows from. It let 2.1.0 add hdr() and parameters() methods for kde objects rather than bespoke accessors, and it let 3.0.0 bring in dist_mclust() to turn a Gaussian mixture model into the same object type — so a mixture, a kernel density estimate and a fitted distribution all flow through one interface. The 3.0.0 additions lean visual and multivariate: outlier maps plotting score distance against orthogonal distance, biplot projections with variable axes overlaid, and an augment() method for robust PCA objects. Dependencies have been shed steadily along the way — lookout, interpolation — while mvscale() moved out and then back in.

◆ Prediction

Expect surprisals() coverage to keep extending to further model classes, and the multivariate and robust-PCA diagnostics introduced in 3.0.0 to gain the same distributional-object treatment as the univariate side.

Alternatives to mapSpain and weird

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 mapSpain or weird.

See all mapSpain alternatives → · See all weird alternatives →

Recent activity from mapSpain and weird

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 1mo agoweirdOutlier maps, biplot projections, and Gaussian mixtures as distributional objects
  2. 1mo agomapSpainInternal helper refactor with the public API held fixed
  3. 3mo agoweirdsurprisals() reaches glm objects; lookout dependency dropped
  4. 4mo agomapSpainQuery timeout becomes configurable
  5. 6mo agoweirdPackage refactored onto distributional objects; density_scores becomes surprisals
  6. 7mo agomapSpain1.0.0 rebuilds on httr2 and invalidates every cache
  7. 1y agomapSpainComarcas and simplified INE geometries added
  8. 1y agomapSpainComarca types split across four official sources
  9. 1y agomapSpainAdapted to the SIANE 2024 databases
  10. 2y agoweirdWine reviews dataset replaced with a fetch function

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between mapSpain and weird?

Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. mapSpain and weird 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 mapSpain better than weird?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. mapSpain and weird 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 mapSpain?

Top mapSpain alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mapSpain alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mapspain for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to weird?

Top weird alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "weird alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/weird-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.