ggpointless
ggpointless keeps adding the ggplot2 layers nobody else bothered to write.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of PEIMAN2 and usmapdata — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
PEIMAN2 cut its annotation database loose from its release cycle without breaking CRAN.
PEIMAN2 does enrichment analysis over post-translational modifications, testing whether a protein list is enriched for particular PTMs against UniProt-derived annotations, with translation functions bridging to mass spectrometry workflows. Its answers are only as current as its bundled database, and until June that database could only be refreshed by releasing a new package version. Version 1.1.0 changes that.
usmapdata ships its 2025 shapefiles on the year-indexed model it adopted in 0.4.0.
usmapdata supplies the boundary data behind usmap's plotting functions. Since 0.4.0 it has been year-indexed: us_map(data_year = ) selects a vintage, and each Census release is added as its own year with older ones still reachable. 1.1.0 adds 2025. 1.0.0 closed the package's longest-standing gap by adding Puerto Rico, retroactively across every vintage.
PEIMAN2 does enrichment analysis over post-translational modifications, testing whether a protein list is enriched for particular PTMs against UniProt-derived annotations, with translation functions bridging to mass spectrometry workflows. Its answers are only as current as its bundled database, and until June that database could only be refreshed by releasing a new package version. Version 1.1.0 changes that.
The package has been moving from a fixed snapshot toward versioned, user-selectable data. Earlier releases updated the bundled database in place — 1.0.0 shipped the March 2025 version and said little else — which meant the annotation vintage was whatever the package version implied. Now update_peiman_database() downloads and caches external database files and UniProt PTM lists, enrichment workflows take a database_version argument, and the mass-spec translators take a ptmlist_version, so an analysis can pin a dated database rather than a package release. The CRAN-safe default is preserved deliberately: loading, examples and checks still use the bundled internal data and need no network.
Version pinning is now expressible but the release notes do not describe how a chosen version is recorded in output, so surfacing the active database version in results is the natural companion. The database and the UniProt PTM list are versioned separately, which leaves room for a combined manifest.
usmapdata supplies the boundary data behind usmap's plotting functions. Since 0.4.0 it has been year-indexed: us_map(data_year = ) selects a vintage, and each Census release is added as its own year with older ones still reachable. 1.1.0 adds 2025. 1.0.0 closed the package's longest-standing gap by adding Puerto Rico, retroactively across every vintage.
The package has settled into a predictable rhythm — one shapefile vintage per year, with structural change rare and clustered. The two changes that mattered were data_year in 0.4.0, which turned a single-vintage dataset into a time series, and the tibble-to-data-frame switch in 0.6.0 that reduced what downstream callers have to depend on.
The stated policy — each year added going forward, previous years reachable through data_year — points to a 2026 vintage as the next release. Nothing in these notes suggests further change to the data model.
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 PEIMAN2 or usmapdata.
ggpointless keeps adding the ggplot2 layers nobody else bothered to write.
mpactr spent two spring releases normalizing case in metadata after users kept tripping on it.
surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.
surveycore declared its API stable with every survey design type covered.
prospectr spent its biggest release in years fixing spectra it had been quietly mangling.
A German electricity load-profile package added gas and doubled the market it serves.
See all PEIMAN2 alternatives → · See all usmapdata alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-packages — within Infra & APIs. usmapdata is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. 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. usmapdata is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
Top PEIMAN2 alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "PEIMAN2 alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/peiman2 for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top usmapdata alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "usmapdata alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/usmapdata for the full list with editorial commentary on each.