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A Bayesian spatial modelling package rebuilding its foundations one breaking release at a time
Comparison · Infra & APIs
afcharts vs Skipper
A side-by-side editorial comparison of afcharts and Skipper — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
afcharts vs Skipper: at a glance
What is afcharts?
UK government chart styling in ggplot2, chasing ggplot2 v4 and stretching its palette to five.
afcharts supplies the UK Analysis Function's chart styling for ggplot2, as a theme, colour and fill scales, and a use_afcharts() call that applies the styling globally. Version 0.5.1 extends the sequential palette to five shades so it can carry quintile data such as deprivation bands, renames the na_colour argument to na.value, and adds a reset argument to switch the styling back off. The package began as a first release derived from sgplot and has had three releases in roughly two years.
What is Skipper?
Skipper trims a 4x memory regression out of routesrv, days after shipping h2c
Zalando's HTTP router ships patch tags almost daily, and most carry a single dependency bump or a one-line auth fix. The substance in this window is v0.27.63, which stops routesrv holding an uncompressed route tree alongside the compressed buffer: retained memory in the release's own benchmark falls from 30.7 MB to 2.0 MB, undoing most of the 4x increase zone-aware routing had introduced. Around it sit narrow auth repairs, and an eskip parser change that finally accepts negative numeric arguments in predicates and filters.
afcharts vs Skipper: editorial side-by-side
afcharts
0.0INFRA · APIS
UK government chart styling in ggplot2, chasing ggplot2 v4 and stretching its palette to five.
◆ Current state
afcharts supplies the UK Analysis Function's chart styling for ggplot2, as a theme, colour and fill scales, and a use_afcharts() call that applies the styling globally. Version 0.5.1 extends the sequential palette to five shades so it can carry quintile data such as deprivation bands, renames the na_colour argument to na.value, and adds a reset argument to switch the styling back off. The package began as a first release derived from sgplot and has had three releases in roughly two years.
◆ Where it's heading
The work splits between palette design and keeping the styling composable. On the design side the sequential palette growing to five shades is driven by a specific reporting need rather than aesthetics, since quintiles are a standard unit in UK official statistics. On the mechanical side, the na.value rename was forced by ggplot2 v4.0.1, theme_af() now respects options set by an earlier use_afcharts() call, and a reset argument acknowledges that global styling needs an off switch. These are the problems a styling package hits once people use it inside larger documents.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued adjustment to ggplot2 v4, since the na.value rename is unlikely to be the only argument affected, and further palette work driven by the reporting formats government analysts actually publish. As a sibling to aftables in the same Analysis Function family, it is likely to keep tracking that guidance rather than setting its own direction.
Skipper
5.0INFRA · APIS
Skipper trims a 4x memory regression out of routesrv, days after shipping h2c
◆ Current state
Zalando's HTTP router ships patch tags almost daily, and most carry a single dependency bump or a one-line auth fix. The substance in this window is v0.27.63, which stops routesrv holding an uncompressed route tree alongside the compressed buffer: retained memory in the release's own benchmark falls from 30.7 MB to 2.0 MB, undoing most of the 4x increase zone-aware routing had introduced. Around it sit narrow auth repairs, and an eskip parser change that finally accepts negative numeric arguments in predicates and filters.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the recent tags. The data path keeps getting real work - leastRequests balancing, then h2c end to end in v0.27.57, now the memory cost of zone-aware routing being paid back. The auth filters, by contrast, are only being maintained: token introspection, grant auth, and now the OIDC Referer handling are fixes rather than new capability, and several are follow-ups to each other rather than independent bugs.
◆ Prediction
Zone-aware routing looks like the source of the recent memory attention, so expect further tuning around route storage and the hash computation done on every pull, which the release's second benchmark already isolates. The OIDC cookie change is the second link in an auth chain that started with the grant-auth fix, and is likely to draw another follow-up.
Alternatives to afcharts and Skipper
Other Infra & APIs 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 afcharts or Skipper.
coga
A gamma-convolution density package that reached completion in 2018 and has coasted since.
smam
Animal-movement models in R, where new stochastic processes arrive years apart.
baseq
A basic DNA and RNA sequence toolkit that went quiet for three years, then jumped to 2.0.
pakret
Package citation for R documents, quietly growing to meet Quarto.
aftables
Accessible government spreadsheets in R, rebuilt on openxlsx2 and renamed along the way.
See all afcharts alternatives → · See all Skipper alternatives →
Recent activity from afcharts and Skipper
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 20h agoSkipperMove OIDC flow protection from Referer to cookies
- 20h agoSkipperv0.27.63: Store routes compressed-only, decompress on demand (#4198)
- 1d agoSkipperEskip predicates and filters accept negative numbers
- 1d agoSkipperFix token introspection handling
- 1d agoSkipperFix grant auth flow
- 2d agoSkipperUpdate outdated golang.org/x dependencies
- 5mo agoafchartsSequential palette reaches five shades for quintile data
- 1y agoafchartsNamespace and argument-passing fixes
- 1y agoafchartsFirst release, derived from sgplot
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between afcharts and Skipper?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Skipper is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 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 afcharts better than Skipper?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Skipper is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to afcharts?
Top afcharts alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "afcharts alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/afcharts for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Skipper?
Top Skipper alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Skipper alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/skipper for the full list with editorial commentary on each.