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Comparison · Analytics
vellumplot vs watina
A side-by-side editorial comparison of vellumplot and watina — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:data-visualization
vellumplot vs watina: at a glance
What is vellumplot?
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
A new grammar of graphics built on the vellum vector engine, developing fast — ten releases in roughly three weeks — and now at its first tagged release. The distinguishing architectural claim is that the compiled plot is the scene, so a static export and an interactive widget cannot drift apart, and that it renders without a graphics device because vellum measures text itself. Accessibility is treated as a first-class output rather than an afterthought: tagged PDF with a navigable structure tree and alt text, a plot_lint() check, and colour-vision-deficiency simulation at render time.
What is watina?
A groundwater database client that has started doing the domain analysis too
watina is the R interface to the Watina groundwater monitoring database, and its history is mostly about making data retrieval correct: filter depths guessed conservatively when missing, spatial masking, aggregation methods per observation well, and a long series of fixes to keep the lazy database queries working across dbplyr versions. The most recent release moves past retrieval into interpretation, adding ionic ratio calculation and a Van Wirdum diagram to plot chemistry data.
vellumplot vs watina: editorial side-by-side
vellumplot
6.3ANALYTICS
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
◆ Current state
A new grammar of graphics built on the vellum vector engine, developing fast — ten releases in roughly three weeks — and now at its first tagged release. The distinguishing architectural claim is that the compiled plot is the scene, so a static export and an interactive widget cannot drift apart, and that it renders without a graphics device because vellum measures text itself. Accessibility is treated as a first-class output rather than an afterthought: tagged PDF with a navigable structure tree and alt text, a plot_lint() check, and colour-vision-deficiency simulation at render time.
◆ Where it's heading
The release sequence shows a grammar filling in ggplot2-parity features and specialist marks in parallel. Parity work landed as secondary axes, rich legend titles, and Sankey styling; the specialist end added categorical datashading, image marks, flow maps and edge bundling for dense graphs. Version 0.7.0 shows a willingness to break early — vsunburst() was removed outright in favour of one vhierarchy() constructor covering sunburst, icicle, treemap and circlepack — which is the right time to do it and suggests the API is still being consolidated toward fewer, more general constructors.
◆ Prediction
Expect more consolidation of near-duplicate constructors under type arguments and continued expansion of the declarative interactivity introduced in 0.7.0, now that the first tagged release has fixed a public API surface.
watina
0.0ANALYTICS
A groundwater database client that has started doing the domain analysis too
◆ Current state
watina is the R interface to the Watina groundwater monitoring database, and its history is mostly about making data retrieval correct: filter depths guessed conservatively when missing, spatial masking, aggregation methods per observation well, and a long series of fixes to keep the lazy database queries working across dbplyr versions. The most recent release moves past retrieval into interpretation, adding ionic ratio calculation and a Van Wirdum diagram to plot chemistry data.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is drifting from a database client toward a domain toolkit. Early releases fought the data layer — connection handling moved to inbodb, sorting semantics changed, defunct dbplyr calls worked around. Recent work assumes retrieval is solved and adds hydrochemical analysis on top, along with defensive handling for the physically impossible inputs that analysis exposes, such as zero conductivity in the warehouse.
◆ Prediction
Expect further chemistry analysis and plotting helpers rather than new retrieval functions, since that is where the newest release invested and where the accompanying vignette points.
Alternatives to vellumplot and watina
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 vellumplot or watina.
tidytransit
tidytransit tracks the GTFS spec as it grows, one reader and one router feature at a time.
oblicubes
A tiny grid renderer for oblique-projection cubes, complete since its first release.
biocro
BioCro swapped an unstable iteration for real root finders, changing what its crop models compute.
redist
redist keeps rewriting the sampler underneath a district-drawing API it has held stable since 4.0.
epiflows
epiflows has shipped four releases in eight years, none of which changed the code.
See all vellumplot alternatives → · See all watina alternatives →
Recent activity from vellumplot and watina
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 14d agovellumplotFirst tagged release: one spec compiles to PNG, SVG, tagged PDF and a widget ⚡
- 19d agovellumplotFlow maps and edge bundling for dense graph plots
- 24d agovellumplotvhierarchy() replaces vsunburst(); declarative interactivity arrives
- 26d agovellumplotSankey crossing minimisation and per-branch sunburst colouring
- 29d agovellumplotSecondary axes land; rich legend titles stop clipping
- 1mo agovellumplotCategorical datashading in one call, plus image marks at data points
- 4mo agowatinaIonic ratios and Van Wirdum diagrams for chemistry data
- 2y agowatinaKSgeneral moved to Suggests to survive CRAN removal
- 5y agowatinaDataframe input restored after a defunct dbplyr call
- 5y agowatinadbplyr 2.0 compatibility drops the need for a forked dependency
- 5y agowatinaSpatial clustering of wells and richer location attributes
- 6y agowatinaSoil surface calculation fixed after a select() dropped the variable
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between vellumplot and watina?
Both compete on the same themes — data-visualization — within Analytics. vellumplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 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 vellumplot better than watina?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellumplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 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 vellumplot?
Top vellumplot alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellumplot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellumplot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to watina?
Top watina alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "watina alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/watina-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.