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Development Roadmap

Source: vignettes/articles/development_roadmap.Rmd
development_roadmap.Rmd

This article outlines planned features for future versions of selecta, informed by capabilities available in related packages, EQUATOR guideline requirements, and user feedback. The roadmap is tentative and subject to change based on development priorities and community input.

Planned Features

The following features are under consideration for future releases, organized by priority level.

Higher Priority

Features expected in near-term releases:

Feature Description Reference
R Markdown / Quarto integration Native chunk output for flowchart() without the queue_flow() workaround flowchart, consort
Interactive SVG / HTML output Optional per-node tooltip= / URL= attributes in the dot engine, so the Graphviz SVG and the DiagrammeR::grViz() widget carry hover text and clickable hyperlinks (e.g., linking nodes to methods sections) PRISMA2020
ggplot2 rendering engine Optional engine = "ggplot" for compatibility with patchwork, cowplot, and journal theme systems ggconsort, flowchart

Medium Priority

Features planned for subsequent releases:

Feature Description Reference
Inline text reporting Extract counts at any pipeline stage for R Markdown inline reporting (e.g., cohort_n(flow, "Eligible")) dtrackr
Crossover trial support Period-based layouts for crossover and N-of-1 designs CONSORT extensions
Cluster-randomized layouts Site-level and individual-level flow within the same diagram CONSORT extensions
Custom node shapes User-defined node geometry beyond rectangular boxes (e.g., diamonds for decision points, rounded boxes for assessments) DiagrammeR
Annotation layers Free-text annotations, footnotes, and bracketed comments overlaid on the diagram General

Lower Priority

Features under consideration for future releases:

Feature Description Reference
Mermaid output engine = "mermaid" for native Quarto embedding without DiagrammeR Quarto

Contributing

Contributions to selecta are welcome. Prospective contributors interested in implementing a roadmap feature or proposing a new one are directed to the contributing guidelines in the package repository.

Bug Reports

Bug reports and feature requests may be submitted via the issue tracker, either on Codeberg or GitHub.

A report concerning diagram layout—cropping, spacing, phase-label wrapping, or figure dimensions—is most useful when accompanied by the package’s layout trace. Setting options(selecta.debug_layout = TRUE) before calling flowchart(), flowsave(), or recdims() causes the computation and rendering functions to print the resolved node and edge tables, the computed positions, the recommended dimensions, the per-phase band heights, and the generated DOT source. The trace is emitted through message() and is disabled by default; pasting it into the report, together with a minimal reproducible pipeline, allows a layout issue to be diagnosed without a round trip.

Development Repository

Version History

See the Changelog for a detailed history of changes in each release.

Additional Resources