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Comparison · Analytics
rphylopic vs sccore
A side-by-side editorial comparison of rphylopic and sccore — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
rphylopic vs sccore: at a glance
What is rphylopic?
The R package that puts organism silhouettes on plots keeps widening where they can be drawn.
rphylopic fetches PhyloPic silhouettes and places them into R graphics — base plots, ggplot2 layers, legends, and now phylogenetic trees and igraph networks. The 1.x line has been consistent about two things: adding a new plotting context per release, and steadily replacing its early sizing vocabulary with explicit width and height arguments. Attribution handling is unusually developed for a package this size, with permalinks and per-image credit built into the retrieval functions.
What is sccore?
Shared plumbing for the Kharchenko single-cell stack, updated once a year
sccore is the utility layer under the Kharchenko lab's single-cell packages — embedding plots, dot plots, parallel apply helpers and distance metrics that the downstream tools depend on rather than a tool researchers drive directly. The recent releases fix the Jensen-Shannon distance computation between matrix columns and add optional OpenMP support to the RcppArmadillo build. Cadence is roughly one CRAN release a year.
rphylopic vs sccore: editorial side-by-side
rphylopic
0.0ANALYTICS
The R package that puts organism silhouettes on plots keeps widening where they can be drawn.
◆ Current state
rphylopic fetches PhyloPic silhouettes and places them into R graphics — base plots, ggplot2 layers, legends, and now phylogenetic trees and igraph networks. The 1.x line has been consistent about two things: adding a new plotting context per release, and steadily replacing its early sizing vocabulary with explicit width and height arguments. Attribution handling is unusually developed for a package this size, with permalinks and per-image credit built into the retrieval functions.
◆ Where it's heading
Development is expanding the set of places a silhouette can appear rather than changing what the package does. Base plots came first, then ggplot2 aesthetics and legend glyphs, then trees, then network vertices via an igraph shape registered automatically when both packages load. The other running thread is defensive maintenance against upstream churn: retries on failed API calls, fixes for ggplot2 4.0.0, and now an in-memory cache so repeated calls stop hammering the PhyloPic API. The ysize and size deprecation, opened in 1.5.0, is now complete and the arguments are scheduled for removal.
◆ Prediction
The deprecated ysize and size arguments look set to be removed in the next release, and on the pattern of the last four, another plotting context is a likelier addition than a change to the retrieval layer.
sccore
0.0ANALYTICS
Shared plumbing for the Kharchenko single-cell stack, updated once a year
◆ Current state
sccore is the utility layer under the Kharchenko lab's single-cell packages — embedding plots, dot plots, parallel apply helpers and distance metrics that the downstream tools depend on rather than a tool researchers drive directly. The recent releases fix the Jensen-Shannon distance computation between matrix columns and add optional OpenMP support to the RcppArmadillo build. Cadence is roughly one CRAN release a year.
◆ Where it's heading
Work splits cleanly into two streams: keeping the compiled build acceptable to CRAN as its Makevars policy shifts, and small correctness or interoperability fixes to the plotting and distance helpers. The interoperability thread is the one with direction — embeddingPlot() learning to read Seurat objects in 1.0.6 points at meeting users in the dominant single-cell framework rather than requiring the lab's own object types.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to be driven by a CRAN toolchain requirement or a downstream package's needs, with any user-facing change likely another interoperability or plotting fix rather than new capability.
Alternatives to rphylopic and sccore
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 rphylopic or sccore.
gcube
gcube's recent releases are all packaging metadata, not simulation code
cubist
The R port of Quinlan's Cubist gets reproducibility fixes, not new modelling
ggstats
ggstats keeps widening what a coefficient or Likert plot can be
ecodive
ecodive rebuilt itself into a broad diversity-metric library, breaking as it went
simStateSpace
State-space data simulation for R, filled in one function at a time
See all rphylopic alternatives → · See all sccore alternatives →
Recent activity from rphylopic and sccore
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agorphylopicSilhouettes become igraph vertices; API responses cached
- 4mo agosccoreJensen-Shannon distance fixed, OpenMP support added
- 8mo agorphylopicBase R phylogenies gain silhouette annotation
- 1y agosccoreembeddingPlot() reads Seurat objects directly
- 1y agorphylopicExplicit width and height replace the old sizing arguments
- 2y agorphylopicSilhouette legends and attribution permalinks
- 2y agosccoreVersion 1.0.5
- 2y agorphylopicSilhouette resolution helper and safer colour defaults
- 2y agorphylopicRendering dependencies bumped for grImport2 and rsvg
- 3y agosccoreVersion 1.0.4
- 3y agosccoreVersion 1.0.3
- 3y agosccoreVersion 1.0.2
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between rphylopic and sccore?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. rphylopic and sccore 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 rphylopic better than sccore?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. rphylopic and sccore 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 rphylopic?
Top rphylopic alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rphylopic alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rphylopic for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to sccore?
Top sccore alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "sccore alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sccore for the full list with editorial commentary on each.