Tplyr
Tplyr made clinical summary tables explain where every number came from.
Comparison · Analytics
textshaping vs tidytlg
A side-by-side editorial comparison of textshaping and tidytlg — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
textshaping vs tidytlg: at a glance
What is textshaping?
Rewrote its shaping engine for bidirectional text, then spent a year fixing what that broke.
textshaping is the text layout layer beneath R's modern graphics stack, feeding ragg, ggplot2 and marquee. Version 1.0.0 rewrote the shaping engine to honour the global direction of text, adding a direction argument that defaults to automatic detection, align settings that resolve against that direction, and ICU-based soft break locations that handle ideographic scripts properly. The five releases since have been consecutive bug fixes against that rewrite — bidi embedding arrangement, line positioning with mixed sizes, a weak hash in the shape cache, a signed integer overflow, and font fallback regressions.
What is tidytlg?
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
tidytlg generates clinical tables, listings, and graphs from tidyverse-style pipelines, maintained under the pharmaverse organisation. All four releases in the window are from a single eight-month stretch in 2023, and their content is CRAN preparation, a logging-dependency swap, and multi-file support. Release notes are merge lists rather than described changes.
textshaping vs tidytlg: editorial side-by-side
textshaping
0.0ANALYTICS
Rewrote its shaping engine for bidirectional text, then spent a year fixing what that broke.
◆ Current state
textshaping is the text layout layer beneath R's modern graphics stack, feeding ragg, ggplot2 and marquee. Version 1.0.0 rewrote the shaping engine to honour the global direction of text, adding a direction argument that defaults to automatic detection, align settings that resolve against that direction, and ICU-based soft break locations that handle ideographic scripts properly. The five releases since have been consecutive bug fixes against that rewrite — bidi embedding arrangement, line positioning with mixed sizes, a weak hash in the shape cache, a signed integer overflow, and font fallback regressions.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has moved from Latin-first layout to script-agnostic layout in two rewrites, 0.4.0 and 1.0.0, and is now in the long correctness tail that follows. The bug reports arriving from ggplot2, ragg and marquee issue numbers show how it works in practice: textshaping bugs surface as rendering defects in the packages above it, which is why so many fixes here cite another package's issue tracker.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued fixes driven by downstream rendering reports rather than new layout features, as the 1.0.x series stabilises. The font fallback path has produced two of the recent bugs and is the most likely source of the next.
tidytlg
0.0ANALYTICS
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
◆ Current state
tidytlg generates clinical tables, listings, and graphs from tidyverse-style pipelines, maintained under the pharmaverse organisation. All four releases in the window are from a single eight-month stretch in 2023, and their content is CRAN preparation, a logging-dependency swap, and multi-file support. Release notes are merge lists rather than described changes.
◆ Where it's heading
The visible arc is getting onto CRAN and staying installable — vignette corrections per CRAN comments, a badge, a check fix, and replacing the timber logging package with logrx. The one functional addition is multiple-file support. There has been no release since October 2023, so on this evidence the package is stable or dormant rather than actively developing.
◆ Prediction
The entries give no signal about planned work; with nothing shipped in roughly two years, the more likely next event is a maintenance release triggered by a dependency or CRAN check than a feature.
Alternatives to textshaping and tidytlg
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 textshaping or tidytlg.
rlistings
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
hoardr
A cache-directory helper that has shipped nothing but CRAN-triggered patches for seven years.
gigs
gigs redesigned its whole conversion API for rOpenSci, then spent three releases getting the docs to build.
riem
A weather-data client that keeps rewriting its HTTP layer while slowly tightening its API.
datasetjson
datasetjson rebuilt its object model to track the CDISC Dataset-JSON 1.1 schema.
See all textshaping alternatives → · See all tidytlg alternatives →
Recent activity from textshaping and tidytlg
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agotextshapingFixes reverting between font fallbacks
- 9mo agotextshapingGuards against freetype version mismatches with systemfonts
- 11mo agotextshapingFixes a signed integer overflow in the previous fix
- 11mo agotextshapingFixes bidi single-line shaping and a weak shape-cache hash
- 1y agotextshapingFixes hard line breaks across multiple embeddings
- 1y agotextshapingShaping engine rewritten to honour global text direction ⚡
- 2y agotidytlgSwaps the timber logger for logrx
- 3y agotidytlgMultiple-file support and table-binding fixes
- 3y agotidytlgVignette update per CRAN comments
- 3y agotidytlgFirst CRAN release
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between textshaping and tidytlg?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. textshaping and tidytlg 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 textshaping better than tidytlg?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. textshaping and tidytlg 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 textshaping?
Top textshaping alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "textshaping alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/textshaping for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to tidytlg?
Top tidytlg alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidytlg alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidytlg for the full list with editorial commentary on each.