R Observatory: Metrics for handwriterApp version 2.0.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

handwriterApp

2.0.0

A 'shiny' Application for Handwriting Analysis

0packages depend

6Kdownloads / year

0.2%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Stephanie ReindersCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: Iowa State University of Science and Technology on behalf of its Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence

Perform statistical writership analysis of scanned handwritten documents with a 'shiny' app for 'handwriter'.

Changes in 2.0.0

New features

Added functionality from 'handwriterRF' to the 'shiny' app. The new functionality allows users to perform forensic handwriting comparison of two scanned handwritten documents. This uses the statistical method described by Madeline Johnson and Danica Ommen (2021) <doi:10.1002/sam.11566>. Similarity measures and a random forest produce a score-based likelihood ratio that quantifies the strength of the evidence in favor of the documents being written by the same writer or different writers.

Minor improvements and fixes

Added the option to view a full-screen version of images displayed with singleImageUI() and singleImageServer().
Changed the navigation bar to have tabs Home, Scenarios, Scenario 1, Scenario 2, and More. More is a drop-down menu that gives the options About, Permitted Use, Contact, and License.
Added a Permitted Use tab that informs users the app has not been validated for casework or court testimony and should not be used to draw formal conclusions. The app may be used for research and testing by forensics practitioners and other.
Created a new function plot_writer_profiles() that plots writer profiles on the same set of axes and labels the lines by the document name. This function is similar to handwriter::plot_cluster_fill_rates(), but that function labels the lines by writer ID.
Changed the color of links to light blue in the sidebar and purple in the body.
Fixed a bug in the demo where the document previews were not displaying correctly.
Renamed currentImageUI() and currentImageServer() as selectImageUI() and selectImageServer() respectively. This change better accommodates the new singleImageUI() and singleImageServer() module.
Replaced the phrase "simulate casework" with "use your own samples" in Scenario 2 for better clarity.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("handwriterApp", 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("CSAFE-ISU/handwriterApp")

Development version from CSAFE-ISU/handwriterApp. 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-handwriterapp

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-handwriterApp

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-handwriterApp

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: 59 s · r-devel-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 2.0.0

READMEYes · 163 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 2.0.0Citation fileNo

Help pages: 5 (1 internal)
Examples that run: 75%3 run in a plain check · 1 never run
Exported functions with examples: 67%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

6K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #7,897 · ~16/day · ~499/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

51630 days

1.1K90 days

6K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on68 r2u2 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

csafe-isu/handwriterapp ↗Organization: CSAFE-ISU

2Stars

1Forks

7Open issues

0Open PRs

2Releases

256Commits

1Commit identities

License file reads as GPL-3.0 · 256 commits · Last activity 2024-12-05 · Default branch at 2.0.0.9000, ahead of CRAN 2.0.0 (checked 2026-10-11)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 95%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 2
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

9 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 5 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/csafe-isu/handwriterapp on 2026-10-11.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

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

Docs source (3)

README.qmd

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2024-12-05 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

data-raw/

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdrevdep/

Show all practicesHide 1 practice

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

16 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing handwriterApp adds 120 packages (63 with compiled code, 112 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, ggplot2 6.0 MB, bslib 5.6 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 2.10

Imports (14)

bslib dplyr ggplot2 handwriter handwriterRF magick magrittr rmarkdown shiny shinycssloaders shinyFiles shinyjs stringr tidyr

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (2)

knitr testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (2)

Stephanie Reinders

Author, Maintainer since 1.0.1 (2024)

Iowa State University of Science and Technology on behalf of its Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence

Author, Copyright holder, Funder

Releases (2)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
2.0.0Latest
record
2024-11-13 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
plot_writer_profiles
1.0.1
record
2024-09-09
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24

Package metadata

First published: 2024-09-09
Total releases: 2 / 2 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 2.10
Bundled data: 291 KB / 2 files
Download size: 2.4 MB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("handwriterApp")

Format

Reinders, S., & Iowa State University of Science and Technology on behalf of its Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence. (2024). handwriterApp: A 'shiny' Application for Handwriting Analysis (Version 2.0.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.handwriterApp

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 handwriterApp version 2.0.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-17. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-17, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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