simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
NHSRwaitinglist vs rtrek
A side-by-side editorial comparison of NHSRwaitinglist and rtrek — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
NHSRwaitinglist vs rtrek: at a glance
What is NHSRwaitinglist?
Queuing theory packaged for NHS waiting-list managers, one year into a community-built first release.
NHSRwaitinglist turns queuing-theory methods into functions an NHS analyst can apply directly to a waiting list — target calculations for managing list size, simulation of list behaviour under different assumptions, and scheduling and prioritisation helpers. It is an NHS-R Community collaboration accompanying a preprint tutorial and webinar series, and reached CRAN in April 2025.
What is rtrek?
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
rtrek bundles Star Trek datasets — book series, timelines, episode transcripts, species and homeworlds, map tile sets — and layers live retrieval on top through memory_alpha() and memory_beta() plus their ma_* and mb_* helpers. Recent releases are almost entirely repairs to that retrieval layer as the source wikis change their page structure.
NHSRwaitinglist vs rtrek: editorial side-by-side
NHSRwaitinglist
0.0ANALYTICS
Queuing theory packaged for NHS waiting-list managers, one year into a community-built first release.
◆ Current state
NHSRwaitinglist turns queuing-theory methods into functions an NHS analyst can apply directly to a waiting list — target calculations for managing list size, simulation of list behaviour under different assumptions, and scheduling and prioritisation helpers. It is an NHS-R Community collaboration accompanying a preprint tutorial and webinar series, and reached CRAN in April 2025.
◆ Where it's heading
Three releases in four months trace a normal early-package path: ship the method surface, then harmonise arguments and column handling across functions as contributors find the inconsistencies, then repair what breaks. The package was briefly pulled from CRAN over broken links and needed a date-handling fix for newer R versions, which is the sharper edge of that curve. Contributions are visibly multi-author, with named contributors driving the usability work rather than a single maintainer.
◆ Prediction
Given the pattern of contributor-driven consistency fixes and the tutorial paper behind the package, further vignettes and argument harmonisation are the most likely next release. The entries do not indicate new queuing methods being added.
rtrek
0.0ANALYTICS
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
◆ Current state
rtrek bundles Star Trek datasets — book series, timelines, episode transcripts, species and homeworlds, map tile sets — and layers live retrieval on top through memory_alpha() and memory_beta() plus their ma_* and mb_* helpers. Recent releases are almost entirely repairs to that retrieval layer as the source wikis change their page structure.
◆ Where it's heading
The package's centre of gravity shifted once, at 0.2.0, from shipping static data to querying Memory Alpha and Memory Beta at runtime. Everything since has been the maintenance bill for that decision: HTML update fixes, parser improvements, portal retrieval bugs. Note that version numbers on this feed do not track time — 0.2.5 is stamped a year before 0.1.0, and three tags were backfilled within four minutes in November 2020 — so neither rank nor version ordering here indicates release sequence.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to fix retrieval against another Memory Alpha layout change, which is what the last four have done. The entries give no indication of new datasets or functions in progress.
Alternatives to NHSRwaitinglist and rtrek
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 NHSRwaitinglist or rtrek.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
See all NHSRwaitinglist alternatives → · See all rtrek alternatives →
Recent activity from NHSRwaitinglist and rtrek
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1y agoNHSRwaitinglistDate-handling fix and input checks restore CRAN listing
- 1y agortrekMemory Alpha series portal retrieval fix
- 1y agoNHSRwaitinglistArguments harmonised across functions; simulation vignette added
- 1y agoNHSRwaitinglistFirst release: queuing-theory methods for NHS waiting lists
- 1y agortrekrtrek 0.5.1 release
- 2y agortrekParser improvements for wiki retrieval
- 2y agortrekDead external content and data dependencies removed
- 5y agortrekFixes for source website HTML changes
- 5y agortrekMemory Alpha and Memory Beta web APIs added ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between NHSRwaitinglist and rtrek?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. NHSRwaitinglist and rtrek 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 NHSRwaitinglist better than rtrek?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. NHSRwaitinglist and rtrek 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 NHSRwaitinglist?
Top NHSRwaitinglist alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "NHSRwaitinglist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/nhsrwaitinglist for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to rtrek?
Top rtrek alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rtrek alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rtrek for the full list with editorial commentary on each.