metatools
SDTM supplemental-qualifier merging got sturdier, then the package went quiet for two years.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of marquee and mlr3cmprsk — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
marquee is filling in the typographic details — outlines, border types, real font metrics for underlines.
marquee renders markdown text onto R graphics devices, and backs element_marquee() and geom_marquee() in ggplot2. Development ran in a tight burst through August and September 2025: 1.1.0 added text outlines, a size shortcut and remote PNG/JPEG support, 1.2.0 added border and outline line types and moved underline placement onto font metrics, and 1.2.1 cleaned up the bugs those introduced.
Competing risks arrive in mlr3, going from a non-parametric baseline to Fine-Gray regression in seven weeks.
mlr3cmprsk extends mlr3 to competing-risks analysis: learners predicting cumulative incidence functions, plus measures to score them. It appeared in February 2026 and reached 0.0.5 by April, adding a Fine-Gray learner and a Brier score along the way. The version numbers say pre-release; the cadence says active build-out.
marquee renders markdown text onto R graphics devices, and backs element_marquee() and geom_marquee() in ggplot2. Development ran in a tight burst through August and September 2025: 1.1.0 added text outlines, a size shortcut and remote PNG/JPEG support, 1.2.0 added border and outline line types and moved underline placement onto font metrics, and 1.2.1 cleaned up the bugs those introduced.
The package is converging on typographic fidelity rather than new capability. Early work settled layout semantics — CSS margin collapsing, inline padding reserving space during shaping, devices without glyph support — and recent releases refine how decorations are drawn and measured. The naming cleanup in 1.2.0, border_size becoming border_width, reads as an API being tidied ahead of wider use rather than one still being explored.
Expect continued small releases sanding down rendering edge cases in ggplot2 contexts, since that is where the recent bug reports come from; nothing here signals a new feature area.
mlr3cmprsk extends mlr3 to competing-risks analysis: learners predicting cumulative incidence functions, plus measures to score them. It appeared in February 2026 and reached 0.0.5 by April, adding a Fine-Gray learner and a Brier score along the way. The version numbers say pre-release; the cadence says active build-out.
The package assembled a working evaluation stack fast. It started with the Aalen-Johansen estimator as a non-parametric baseline, added Fine-Gray as a regression alternative, then filled in the scoring side with an AUC refactor and a fixed-time Brier score. Development has run in lockstep with survdistr and mlr3extralearners, which picked up the dependency at 1.5.2.
The visible gaps are more learners — cause-specific Cox and boosting variants — and the tuning and pipeline integration the rest of mlr3 expects; the measure side currently looks further along than the model side.
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 marquee or mlr3cmprsk.
SDTM supplemental-qualifier merging got sturdier, then the package went quiet for two years.
A clinical-script logger that stopped shipping after its 0.2 line, changelogs made of merged PRs.
R's object inspector is losing its view of the internals as CRAN closes off the private C API.
A weather-station data client that broke one return type to hand back distances instead of bare IDs.
giscoR's 1.0 moved its dataset index into the cache, so new Eurostat releases arrive without a package update.
FedData has spent two major versions migrating US federal geodata off R's retiring spatial stack.
See all marquee alternatives → · See all mlr3cmprsk alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. marquee and mlr3cmprsk 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. marquee and mlr3cmprsk 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 marquee alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "marquee alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/marquee for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top mlr3cmprsk alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mlr3cmprsk alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mlr3cmprsk for the full list with editorial commentary on each.