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Comparison · Analytics
tidytab vs xts
A side-by-side editorial comparison of tidytab and xts — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
tidytab vs xts: at a glance
What is tidytab?
A young tabulation helper whose first releases are all dependency modernisation
tidytab is a small R package for tidyverse-style tabulation, three releases into its public life. Nothing so far has added functionality: 0.2.0 fixed a cumulative-percentage calculation and moved to the base R pipe, and 0.3.0 swapped a retired purrr function for tidyr::expand_grid. The one substantive user-facing item in the history is the cumulative percentage fix.
What is xts?
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.
tidytab vs xts: editorial side-by-side
tidytab
0.0ANALYTICS
A young tabulation helper whose first releases are all dependency modernisation
◆ Current state
tidytab is a small R package for tidyverse-style tabulation, three releases into its public life. Nothing so far has added functionality: 0.2.0 fixed a cumulative-percentage calculation and moved to the base R pipe, and 0.3.0 swapped a retired purrr function for tidyr::expand_grid. The one substantive user-facing item in the history is the cumulative percentage fix.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being brought up to current tidyverse conventions by a wave of first-time contributors — six of them in 0.2.0 alone — rather than developed by a sustained maintainer effort. That makes the near-term direction predictable and narrow: retire deprecated idioms, keep CRAN checks clean. There is not yet enough history to say what the package intends to become.
◆ Prediction
With deprecated tidyselect and purrr usage now cleared, the remaining work of this kind is thin, so the next release will show whether the contributor interest converts into new tabulation features or the package settles at its current surface.
xts
0.0ANALYTICS
xts is finished software, and its releases now track R's C API more than user requests.
◆ Current state
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.
◆ Where it's heading
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.
◆ Prediction
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.
Alternatives to tidytab and xts
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 tidytab or xts.
epikit
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
broman
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
qtl
R/qtl is in pure custodial mode: every recent release answers a compiler, not a user
Recent activity from tidytab and xts
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agoxtsmulti.panel plots beyond 8 columns; SET_TYPEOF removed from C
- 5mo agoxtsATTRIB removed from C; rollapply.xts accepts vector widths
- 7mo agotidytabpurrr::cross2() replaced with tidyr::expand_grid()
- 8mo agotidytabCumulative percentage fixed; base pipe replaces magrittr
- 9mo agotidytabNEWS.md added to track changes
- 2y agoxtsMulti-panel event lines; first SET_TYPEOF replacement
- 2y agoxtstclass changes now alter index values; log-scale y-axis added
- 3y agoxtsUpdate path for pre-0.12 objects missing index attributes
- 3y agoxtsOpen-ended time-of-day subsetting; fast scalar na.fill
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between tidytab and xts?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. tidytab 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.
Is tidytab better than xts?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. tidytab 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.
What are the best alternatives to tidytab?
Top tidytab alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidytab alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidytab-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to xts?
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.