mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
Comparison · Analytics
oblicubes vs watina
A side-by-side editorial comparison of oblicubes and watina — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
oblicubes vs watina: at a glance
What is oblicubes?
A tiny grid renderer for oblique-projection cubes, complete since its first release.
oblicubes draws 3D cubes and cuboids in oblique projection as grid grobs, with ggplot2 geom wrappers and a height-matrix helper for turning elevation data into coordinates. The entire feature set arrived in the initial 0.1.2 release, adapted from coolbutuseless's isocubes and cj-holmes's isocuboids. The two releases since have widened compatibility rather than added anything.
What is watina?
A groundwater database client that has started doing the domain analysis too
watina is the R interface to the Watina groundwater monitoring database, and its history is mostly about making data retrieval correct: filter depths guessed conservatively when missing, spatial masking, aggregation methods per observation well, and a long series of fixes to keep the lazy database queries working across dbplyr versions. The most recent release moves past retrieval into interpretation, adding ionic ratio calculation and a Van Wirdum diagram to plot chemistry data.
oblicubes vs watina: editorial side-by-side
oblicubes
0.0ANALYTICS
A tiny grid renderer for oblique-projection cubes, complete since its first release.
◆ Current state
oblicubes draws 3D cubes and cuboids in oblique projection as grid grobs, with ggplot2 geom wrappers and a height-matrix helper for turning elevation data into coordinates. The entire feature set arrived in the initial 0.1.2 release, adapted from coolbutuseless's isocubes and cj-holmes's isocuboids. The two releases since have widened compatibility rather than added anything.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is finished and its maintainer is treating it that way. 1.0.0 removed the R 4.1 native pipe from examples specifically so earlier R versions could use it — reaching backward, not forward — and added image alt text. The only change since is swapping a deprecated dplyr call in examples.
◆ Prediction
Expect nothing beyond occasional dependency deprecation fixes; the release pattern shows a small, deliberately complete package being kept installable.
watina
0.0ANALYTICS
A groundwater database client that has started doing the domain analysis too
◆ Current state
watina is the R interface to the Watina groundwater monitoring database, and its history is mostly about making data retrieval correct: filter depths guessed conservatively when missing, spatial masking, aggregation methods per observation well, and a long series of fixes to keep the lazy database queries working across dbplyr versions. The most recent release moves past retrieval into interpretation, adding ionic ratio calculation and a Van Wirdum diagram to plot chemistry data.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is drifting from a database client toward a domain toolkit. Early releases fought the data layer — connection handling moved to inbodb, sorting semantics changed, defunct dbplyr calls worked around. Recent work assumes retrieval is solved and adds hydrochemical analysis on top, along with defensive handling for the physically impossible inputs that analysis exposes, such as zero conductivity in the warehouse.
◆ Prediction
Expect further chemistry analysis and plotting helpers rather than new retrieval functions, since that is where the newest release invested and where the accompanying vignette points.
Alternatives to oblicubes and watina
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 oblicubes or watina.
broman
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
qtl
R/qtl is in pure custodial mode: every recent release answers a compiler, not a user
GDPuc
A GDP unit converter that keeps widening which currencies and deflators it will accept
geomander
A redistricting toolkit that grows mostly by wiring in new public data sources
geos
The thin GEOS binding for R adds terra interop after three years of compiler triage
See all oblicubes alternatives → · See all watina alternatives →
Recent activity from oblicubes and watina
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agowatinaIonic ratios and Van Wirdum diagrams for chemistry data
- 6mo agooblicubesExamples updated to dplyr::reframe()
- 1y agooblicubesR 4.1 pipe removed from examples; image alt text added
- 2y agowatinaKSgeneral moved to Suggests to survive CRAN removal
- 3y agooblicubesInitial release: oblique-projection cube and cuboid grobs
- 5y agowatinaDataframe input restored after a defunct dbplyr call
- 5y agowatinadbplyr 2.0 compatibility drops the need for a forked dependency
- 5y agowatinaSpatial clustering of wells and richer location attributes
- 6y agowatinaSoil surface calculation fixed after a select() dropped the variable
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between oblicubes and watina?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. oblicubes and watina 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 oblicubes better than watina?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. oblicubes and watina 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 oblicubes?
Top oblicubes alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "oblicubes alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/oblicubes-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to watina?
Top watina alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "watina alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/watina-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.