pr2database
The protist reference database keeps widening past the rRNA gene it was built on.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
pakret vs states
A side-by-side editorial comparison of pakret and states — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
pakret vs states: at a glance
What is pakret?
Package citation for R documents, quietly growing to meet Quarto.
pakret inserts citations for R packages into R Markdown and Quarto documents, resolving each package to a BibTeX entry and writing the .bib file that backs it. Version 0.3.1 adds support for Quarto's inline syntax and separator control when citing several packages in one inline chunk, following 0.3.0, which made the package create missing .bib files, preserve capitalisation in reference titles, and treat the version placeholder in citation templates as optional. Cadence is a handful of small releases a year.
What is states?
State-panel tooling holding steady since its 2020 data and ergonomics release.
states supplies the Gleditsch & Ward and Correlates of War state lists and the tooling to turn them into country-year or country-month panels, with plot_missing() for coverage checks. The substantive work landed in 2020; the releases since are compatibility fixes against ggplot2, dplyr, readr and testthat. The most recent entry is a single test repair.
pakret vs states: editorial side-by-side
pakret
0.0INFRA · APIS
Package citation for R documents, quietly growing to meet Quarto.
◆ Current state
pakret inserts citations for R packages into R Markdown and Quarto documents, resolving each package to a BibTeX entry and writing the .bib file that backs it. Version 0.3.1 adds support for Quarto's inline syntax and separator control when citing several packages in one inline chunk, following 0.3.0, which made the package create missing .bib files, preserve capitalisation in reference titles, and treat the version placeholder in citation templates as optional. Cadence is a handful of small releases a year.
◆ Where it's heading
Every release in this window removes a specific friction someone hit while writing a document. Bib files that had to exist beforehand now get created; single-letter package names like R and C stopped being lower-cased in titles; the package works when loaded after conflicted; citing many packages got faster; and version numbers became optional for documents where they are noise. The 0.3.1 Quarto support extends the same idea to the format its users are moving to. Nothing here is architectural, and nothing needs to be.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued alignment with Quarto as more of its syntax surfaces become relevant, and further refinement of how multi-reference packages resolve to a single entry, which the BibTeX type priority work in 0.2.0 started. The entries give no indication of a 1.0.
states
0.0INFRA · APIS
State-panel tooling holding steady since its 2020 data and ergonomics release.
◆ Current state
states supplies the Gleditsch & Ward and Correlates of War state lists and the tooling to turn them into country-year or country-month panels, with plot_missing() for coverage checks. The substantive work landed in 2020; the releases since are compatibility fixes against ggplot2, dplyr, readr and testthat. The most recent entry is a single test repair.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has reached the point where its own data and API are settled and the release trigger is upstream churn in the tidyverse. What movement there is goes toward making the two state lists interchangeable, with the microstates coding carried from G&W onto the COW data as the clearest example, rather than toward new datasets.
◆ Prediction
The next release is most likely another compatibility pass; a data refresh would be the signal that the package is active again.
Alternatives to pakret and states
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 pakret or states.
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 pakret alternatives → · See all states alternatives →
Recent activity from pakret and states
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agopakretQuarto inline syntax supported; list separators configurable
- 8mo agopakretMissing .bib files created; capitalisation preserved
- 0y agostatesplot_missing() test fixed for the next ggplot2
- 1y agopakretMultiple .bib files supported within one document
- 1y agopakretCitations with pre-written keys now supported
- 1y agopakretbook entries used when no manual entry exists
- 2y agostatesggplot2 and dplyr deprecation cleanup
- 2y agostatesBundled state data stripped to plain data frames
- 5y agostatesMicrostate coding for COW data and state_panel() shortcuts
- 7y agostatesSimpler defaults for state_panel() and plot_missing()
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between pakret and states?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. pakret and states 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 pakret better than states?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. pakret and states 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 pakret?
Top pakret alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "pakret alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/pakret for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to states?
Top states alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "states alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/states for the full list with editorial commentary on each.