R Observatory: Metrics for biscale version 1.1.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

biscale

1.1.0Package record

Tools and Palettes for Bivariate Thematic Mapping

0packages dependsuggested by 4

15.7Kdownloads / year

85.7%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Christopher PrenerCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

Provides a 'ggplot2' centric approach to bivariate mapping. This is a technique that maps two quantities simultaneously rather than the single value that most thematic maps display. The package provides a suite of tools for calculating breaks using multiple different approaches, a selection of palettes appropriate for bivariate mapping and scale functions for 'ggplot2' calls that adds those palettes to maps. Tools for creating bivariate legends are also included.

Changes in 1.1.0

New feature
The bi_class_breaks() function now has a si_levels argument to enable printing

of rounded breaks' labels with an SI prefix. This is primarily to abbreviate labels for legends.

The bi_legend() function now has a base_family argument, which can be paired with the suggested showtext package to display non-Latin characters. See the "Options for Breaks and Legends" vignette for details on using this new feature.
Internal improvements
Addressed documentation issues with linking to other packages

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("biscale", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("chris-prener/biscale")

Development version from chris-prener/biscale. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-biscale

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-biscale

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-biscale

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 1.5 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-09
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-08
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.1.0

READMEYes · 1,186 wordsVignettesYes · 4 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.1.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 10 (1 internal)
Examples that run: 100%9 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 88%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 75%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (4)

How these are measured

Downloads

15.7K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #3,552 · ~43/day · ~1.3K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.1K30 days

3K90 days

15.7K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on1.6K r2u26 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

chris-prener/biscale ↗Account: chris-prener

130Stars

15Forks

11Open issues

2Open PRs

4Releases

337Commits

7Commit identities

License file reads as GPL-3.0 · 337 commits · Last activity 2025-09-01 · +0.8% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 93%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 25
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-10-11 · 1242026-10-22 · 130

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

16 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 7 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/chris-prener/biscale on 2026-10-22.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Governance and community (4)

Code of conductContributing guideIssue templatesPR template

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2025-09-01 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2025-09-01

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 3 practices

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

data-raw/

CRAN release process (3)

cran-comments.mdrevdep/CRAN-SUBMISSION

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (2026-10-20)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

8 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing biscale adds 20 packages (10 with compiled code, 14 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: ggplot2 6.0 MB, isoband 1.5 MB, farver 1.2 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.5

Imports (2)

classInt ggplot2

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (6)

covr cowplot knitr rmarkdown sf testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Suggested by 4

Suggests, most downloaded first

countryatlas palettes tidycensuskr HawaSpatial

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (4)

Christopher Prener

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.1 (2019)

Timo Grossenbacher

Author

Angelo Zehr

Author

Joshua Stevens

Contributor

Releases (5)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.1.0Latest
record
2025-09-01 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.0.0
record
2022-05-27 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
bi_class_breaks
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
0.2.0
record
2020-05-06 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
bi_pal_manual, bi_scale_color
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
0.1.2
record
2019-06-22 · diff ↗
0.1.1
record
2019-05-19
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26

Package metadata

First published: 2019-05-19
Total releases: 5 / 7 yrs
License: GPL-3 OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.5
Bundled data: 105 KB / 2 files
Download size: 2.6 MB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("biscale")

Format

Prener, C., Grossenbacher, T., Stevens, J., & Zehr, A. (2025). biscale: Tools and Palettes for Bivariate Thematic Mapping (Version 1.1.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.biscale

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for biscale version 1.1.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-25. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-25, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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