pr2database
The protist reference database keeps widening past the rRNA gene it was built on.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
mmpca vs prospectr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of mmpca and prospectr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
mmpca vs prospectr: at a glance
What is mmpca?
Back from CRAN removal under a new maintainer, with the compiled layer rebuilt.
mmpca implements multiple matrix principal component analysis with a compiled GSL backend. The package spent time off CRAN, and its recent history is a rescue operation rather than a feature program: a new maintainer took it over, moved the native build path onto RcppGSL, and folded the hand-written C bindings into Rcpp. The two most recent entries landed the same day, one restoring the package and one clearing residual CRAN comments.
What is prospectr?
prospectr spent its biggest release in years fixing spectra it had been quietly mangling.
prospectr provides the signal-processing layer for near-infrared and visible spectroscopy in R — Savitzky-Golay and gap-segment derivatives, standard normal variate, detrending, continuum removal, splice correction, plus calibration sampling algorithms like Kennard-Stone and DUPLEX and readers for ASD and BUCHI NIRCal instrument files. The May release is the substantial one: a long list of corrections to functions that were returning wrong or missing values rather than failing.
mmpca vs prospectr: editorial side-by-side
mmpca
0.0INFRA · APIS
Back from CRAN removal under a new maintainer, with the compiled layer rebuilt.
◆ Current state
mmpca implements multiple matrix principal component analysis with a compiled GSL backend. The package spent time off CRAN, and its recent history is a rescue operation rather than a feature program: a new maintainer took it over, moved the native build path onto RcppGSL, and folded the hand-written C bindings into Rcpp. The two most recent entries landed the same day, one restoring the package and one clearing residual CRAN comments.
◆ Where it's heading
Work is concentrated on making the package installable and check-clean rather than on the decomposition itself. The version stamps run out of order, with 2.0.3 predating both 2.0.2 and 2.0.4 by three years, so the feed reads as an archive flush around the CRAN return. Nothing in the entries points at method-level work.
◆ Prediction
Expect maintenance releases that keep the compiled code passing CRAN checks; the entries give no signal about new decomposition features.
prospectr
0.0INFRA · APIS
prospectr spent its biggest release in years fixing spectra it had been quietly mangling.
◆ Current state
prospectr provides the signal-processing layer for near-infrared and visible spectroscopy in R — Savitzky-Golay and gap-segment derivatives, standard normal variate, detrending, continuum removal, splice correction, plus calibration sampling algorithms like Kennard-Stone and DUPLEX and readers for ASD and BUCHI NIRCal instrument files. The May release is the substantial one: a long list of corrections to functions that were returning wrong or missing values rather than failing.
◆ Where it's heading
The recent work is corrective rather than additive, and several items changed results silently before being caught. continuumRemoval() derived its convex-hull boundary offset from a fixed one-wavelength assumption that broke for fine-resolution spectra or non-nanometre units; cochranTest() passed an invalid argument name to prcomp() and produced incorrect principal component scores; readASD() silently dropped spectra in one branch of its text path. Two file readers were leaking connections. Alongside that runs a smaller thread of decoupling preprocessing steps from each other, most visibly detrend() gaining an snv argument so polynomial detrending can run without the SNV transform that Barnes et al. bundled with it.
◆ Prediction
The detrend() decoupling is the only recent addition and it fits a broader pipeline-composition direction, so similar separation of other bundled preprocessing steps is the plausible next move. The misspelled substraction argument now carries a deprecation warning, which schedules its removal for a future release.
Alternatives to mmpca and prospectr
Other Infra & APIs 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 mmpca or prospectr.
ggalign
Composable aligned layouts, rebuilt on S7 while ggplot2 4.0 lands underneath.
prioritizr
Conservation planning absorbs the literature's target-setting rules as code.
jSDM
Joint species distribution models in Gibbs-sampled C++, quiet since 2023.
rsofun
An ecosystem model starts tracking carbon isotopes and land-use change.
usmap
Ten years in, US mapping splits its data out and finally adds Puerto Rico.
See all mmpca alternatives → · See all prospectr alternatives →
Recent activity from mmpca and prospectr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoprospectrdetrend() can run without a prior SNV transformation
- 2mo agoprospectrContinuum removal, SNV and cochranTest corrected; readers stop leaking
- 8mo agommpcaMinor CRAN comments cleared to keep the package listed
- 8mo agommpcaBack on CRAN under a new maintainer, rebuilt on RcppGSL ⚡
- 1y agoprospectrread_nircal() sample ID field fix
- 3y agommpcaValgrind memory fixes and a maximum-iteration option
- 3y agoprospectrNon-UTF8 sample IDs no longer become NA
- 4y agoprospectrkenStone() bug fix
- 4y agoprospectrread_nircal() execution failure fixed
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between mmpca and prospectr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. mmpca and prospectr 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 mmpca better than prospectr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. mmpca and prospectr 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to mmpca?
Top mmpca alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mmpca alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mmpca for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to prospectr?
Top prospectr alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "prospectr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/prospectr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.