NEWS

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flametree 0.2.0 (2026-07-28)

• Reintroduces prune support, which had been removed prior to the 0.1.3 release. flametree_grow() gains a prune argument: a spark function (like seg_col, seg_wid, shift_x, and shift_y) that controls the probability that a given shoot stops growing early. The default, spark_nothing(), disables pruning and reproduces prior behaviour exactly. Pruned shoots keep the segment they already grew, and that segment is marked as a leaf (id_leaf), but it produces no further descendants. Also relaxes split to allow a value of 1, which disables branching altogether and produces a single winding path per tree (#19).
• ft__check_colour() now validates that the background and palette arguments to flametree_plot() are colours that R actually recognises (via grDevices::col2rgb()), rather than only checking that they are character vectors. Invalid colours (e.g. "##f6b6a6") now throw an informative error from flametree_plot() itself, rather than failing deep inside grid graphics code (#17).
• flametree_grow() now warns when the requested time, split, and trees combination is expected to produce a very large data frame (row count grows as trees * split ^ time), since this was the most common cause of "cannot allocate vector" memory errors (#18).
• Adds two more missing input validation checks: flametree_grow()'s trees argument (previously unchecked entirely, so e.g. trees = 2.5 silently misbehaved and other invalid input failed with cryptic low-level errors), and flametree_save()'s plot argument (previously, passing anything other than a ggplot object either failed with a cryptic error or, in the case of plot = NULL, silently saved an unrelated plot via ggplot2::last_plot() instead of erroring).
• Switches all internal code, @examples, README.Rmd, and vignettes to use the base R native pipe |> instead of the magrittr pipe %>%, and adds Depends: R (>= 4.1.0) accordingly. The %>% operator re-exported from magrittr is unaffected and still available for backward compatibility.
• Rewords the Description field in DESCRIPTION: the growth algorithm is a stochastic branching process, not a formal L-system (which implies a deterministic rewriting grammar), so the earlier description was technically misleading. Also fixes a grammatical mismatch in the same field ("generating the data structures and visualise them" → "...and visualising them").
• Sets up spell checking for the package documentation, using the spelling package. Sets Language: en-GB in DESCRIPTION (the package consistently uses British spellings such as "colour" and "visualise"), and adds an inst/WORDLIST of accepted technical terms. Along the way, fixes a handful of genuine typos found by the spell check: "tesselation" → "tessellation", "wdith" → "width", and "abranching" → "a branching" (in flametree_plot() and flametree_grow()'s documentation).
• Further documentation clarity pass: fixes a copy-paste error in the @param y description for the sparks functions (previously said "horizontal" for both x and y); removes a stray backtick in flametree_grow()'s @return docs; documents that flametree_plot(style = "themegray") also accepts the British spelling "themegrey"; updates a stale comment in checks.R that referred to prune as removed, when it has since been reintroduced; and, in the vignettes, mentions the prune spark argument (previously omitted) and fixes a couple more typos ("wheras", a missing article, and another instance of "tesselation") that weren't caught by the spell check because vignettes are currently excluded from it.

flametree 0.1.3 (2021-11-29)

• Removes an unnecessary dependency on the paletteer package.
• Changes the maintainer email address to one under long-term personal control, rather than a university address.
• Adds this NEWS.md file to track user-facing changes to the package going forward.

flametree 0.1.2 (2021-04-27)

• Tightens validation of the arguments to flametree_grow() and flametree_plot().
• Updates and extends the documentation for flametree_grow() and the sparks functions, and lightly reworks the "voronoi" style documentation.
• Adds a Voronoi-style example image to the README, and removes an unused vignette.

flametree 0.1.1

• Fixes a bug in the "wisp" style where segments were grouped by id_path instead of id_pathtree, causing segments from different trees that happened to share an id_path value to be incorrectly joined together (#14).

flametree 0.1

• First CRAN release.
• Consolidates what had been several separate, inconsistent plotting systems (ashtree, wisptree, voronoitree, and the original flametree functions) into the single, unified interface that the package still uses: flametree_grow() to generate the underlying data, and flametree_plot() to render it in a chosen style ("plain", "minimal", "themegray", "voronoi", "wisp", or "nativeflora").
• Introduces the "spark function" system (spark_linear(), spark_decay(), spark_random(), spark_nothing()) for controlling segment colour, segment width, and horizontal/vertical displacement during growth.
• Adds id_leaf to the data structure returned by flametree_grow(), identifying terminal segments.
• Renames all unexported functions to use a consistent ft__ prefix, and adds an initial test suite and package documentation site (via pkgdown).

flametree 0.0.1

• Early development version, predating the unified flametree_grow()/flametree_plot() interface introduced in 0.1. Establishes the core data structure for representing a grown tree, and simplifies the internal API and default parameter values.