paleobuddy
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of rjdqa and xts — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
rjdqa keeps refining one screen: the seasonal adjustment quality dashboard
rjdqa builds quality assessment dashboards for seasonal adjustment models produced by JDemetra+, aimed at official statisticians reviewing adjusted series. Essentially all development goes into two functions, simple_dashboard() and its denser variant simple_dashboard2(). Version 0.1.6 adds parameters to append observations to the forecast and to control whether the residual trading-days test is printed, defaulting to monthly series only, plus outlier table layout work and user-defined calendar regressor support in sc_dashboard().
xts is finished software, and its releases now track R's C API more than user requests.
xts is the time-series class underpinning much of R's financial stack, and it behaves like infrastructure: the visible releases are bug fixes, plotting repairs and conformance work. A recurring thread is removing calls R no longer considers public — SET_TYPEOF in 0.14.0 and 0.14.1, then ATTRIB() and SET_ATTRIB() in 0.14.2. Feature additions are rare and small, the last cluster being open-ended time-of-day subsetting and na.fill performance in 0.13.0.
rjdqa builds quality assessment dashboards for seasonal adjustment models produced by JDemetra+, aimed at official statisticians reviewing adjusted series. Essentially all development goes into two functions, simple_dashboard() and its denser variant simple_dashboard2(). Version 0.1.6 adds parameters to append observations to the forecast and to control whether the residual trading-days test is printed, defaulting to monthly series only, plus outlier table layout work and user-defined calendar regressor support in sc_dashboard().
The package has converged on a single deliverable and is tuning it against reviewer practice. Each release adds a parameter that lets the analyst include or exclude one element of the dashboard, or adjusts how densely information is packed into the fixed space of the layout. The td_effect default — print the test only for monthly series — is characteristic: the knowledge about when a diagnostic is meaningful is being encoded into the tool rather than left to the reader.
The pattern of adding one toggle per diagnostic per release points at the same thing again, most likely another test given a conditional default, rather than a new dashboard function alongside the two that exist.
xts is the time-series class underpinning much of R's financial stack, and it behaves like infrastructure: the visible releases are bug fixes, plotting repairs and conformance work. A recurring thread is removing calls R no longer considers public — SET_TYPEOF in 0.14.0 and 0.14.1, then ATTRIB() and SET_ATTRIB() in 0.14.2. Feature additions are rare and small, the last cluster being open-ended time-of-day subsetting and na.fill performance in 0.13.0.
Two forces drive releases. R core keeps narrowing its public C API, and xts keeps rewriting internals to stay inside it; separately, ggplot-era changes elsewhere in the ecosystem surface plotting bugs that get fixed one report at a time. Nearly every entry credits an outside reporter, which is what maintenance of a dependency this widely used looks like.
Further C API conformance work is the safest expectation, since two consecutive releases have each removed a different non-API entry point and R has continued tightening that boundary.
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 rjdqa or xts.
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. rjdqa and xts 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. rjdqa and xts 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.
Top rjdqa alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rjdqa alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rjdqa-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top xts alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "xts alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/xts-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.