DoseFinding
New stewardship at openpharma, then two releases adding the methods MCP-Mod was missing
Comparison · Analytics
r2rtf vs sofa
A side-by-side editorial comparison of r2rtf and sofa — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
r2rtf vs sofa: at a glance
What is r2rtf?
The clinical-report table engine learned Chinese, then learned to leave RTF entirely
r2rtf builds the RTF tables, listings and figures that go into clinical study reports, and its recent releases have been about widening who and what it can serve rather than changing how tables are composed. The 1.2.0 release added internationalization — a SimSun font path for Chinese characters plus hyphenation control — and 1.3.0 followed with write_docx() and write_html(), turning the LibreOffice conversion the package had documented into exported functions.
What is sofa?
A CouchDB client for R whose recent work is all test infrastructure, not new routes.
sofa wraps the CouchDB HTTP API for R — database and document CRUD, Mango queries and indexes, design documents, replication, and attachments, organized around a Cushion connection object. Feature development effectively stopped after 0.4.0 brought CouchDB v3 compatibility in 2020. The two 2026 releases are a testing and packaging overhaul: 0.4.1 rebuilt the suite around a crul-mocked fake CouchDB so tests no longer need Cloudant or a local Docker instance, reaching 100% coverage, and 0.4.2 cleared CRAN check notes.
r2rtf vs sofa: editorial side-by-side
r2rtf
0.0ANALYTICS
The clinical-report table engine learned Chinese, then learned to leave RTF entirely
◆ Current state
r2rtf builds the RTF tables, listings and figures that go into clinical study reports, and its recent releases have been about widening who and what it can serve rather than changing how tables are composed. The 1.2.0 release added internationalization — a SimSun font path for Chinese characters plus hyphenation control — and 1.3.0 followed with write_docx() and write_html(), turning the LibreOffice conversion the package had documented into exported functions.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the window. One is output reach: RTF remains the composition target, but the artifacts that come out of it now include DOCX and HTML, and page numbering can be made table-relative across multi-page tables. The other is durability under a moving R and font stack — the ANSI/Unicode converter was rebuilt, the LaTeX mapping table generated from code rather than shipped as sysdata, unlist() usage fixed for R 4.5, and graphics-device leaks that produced stray Rplots.pdf closed off.
◆ Prediction
Having exported DOCX and HTML conversion, the likely next step is filling in what those formats lose relative to RTF — pagination and footnote fidelity are the obvious gaps. The i18n path currently covers Chinese only, so additional font families are the other plausible direction.
sofa
2.5ANALYTICS
A CouchDB client for R whose recent work is all test infrastructure, not new routes.
◆ Current state
sofa wraps the CouchDB HTTP API for R — database and document CRUD, Mango queries and indexes, design documents, replication, and attachments, organized around a Cushion connection object. Feature development effectively stopped after 0.4.0 brought CouchDB v3 compatibility in 2020. The two 2026 releases are a testing and packaging overhaul: 0.4.1 rebuilt the suite around a crul-mocked fake CouchDB so tests no longer need Cloudant or a local Docker instance, reaching 100% coverage, and 0.4.2 cleared CRAN check notes.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a rOpenSci package being brought back to a maintainable state rather than extended. The 0.4.1 decision to mock the server is the consequential one — it decouples CI from a live CouchDB, which is what made the cross-platform GitHub Actions workflow and full coverage possible at all. Two genuine bugs surfaced in that process, in db_replicate() URL construction against non-Cloudant servers and db_alldocs(disk=) not returning the documented file path, suggesting the untested paths had drifted.
◆ Prediction
With the test harness now self-contained, the next plausible move is catching up on CouchDB routes added since v3 rather than further infrastructure work, though nothing in these entries commits to it.
Alternatives to r2rtf and sofa
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 r2rtf or sofa.
webmockr
The stubbing library added httr2 support, then spent a year cutting itself free of everything else
crul
crul took mocking back from webmockr and made it a property of the client itself
dendroNetwork
Six releases, six identical bodies — the feed carries the package abstract instead of release notes
chattr
chattr deleted every LLM integration it had written and outsourced the lot to ellmer
cloudml
Six years since the last functional change, and Google renamed the service it wraps in the release before that
Recent activity from r2rtf and sofa
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 21d agosofaCRAN check notes and metadata corrections
- 2mo agosofaTests moved to a mocked CouchDB, coverage to 100%
- 7mo agor2rtfDOCX and HTML output become exported functions
- 11mo agor2rtfChinese character support arrives via an i18n font path ⚡
- 1y agor2rtfText colour fixed for figures encoded into RTF
- 1y agor2rtfFootnote handling fixed for R 4.5.0
- 1y agor2rtfUnicode converter rebuilt and mapping table made inspectable
- 2y agor2rtfUTF-8 conversion fix and LibreOffice 7.6 support
- 6y agosofaCouchDB v3 support, doc_upsert() and bulk get
- 8y agosofaMango index management and batched design search
- 9y agosofasofa v0.2.0
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between r2rtf and sofa?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. sofa 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.
Is r2rtf better than sofa?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. sofa 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 Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to r2rtf?
Top r2rtf alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "r2rtf alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/r2rtf for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to sofa?
Top sofa alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "sofa alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sofa for the full list with editorial commentary on each.