[R-sig-Geo] Replacement shapefiles with SpatiaLite for R-geo packages(spdep, rgeos etc.)

[hi_ono2001 at ybb.ne.jp]

Hello.

 Recently SpatiaLite 4.0 was released. It has lots of powerful, fast and robust functions for Geoprocessing(spatial queries, overlay analysis, creating topology, network analysis, gridding, creating TIN/voronois).
 Some people say SpatiaLite is one of candidate to next standard spatial data format. 

 Current rgeos package seems to be slower and unstable for bigger spatial data.
 And I think if using SpatiaLite, spdep could create spatial weight matrices more speedy than current ones. If this, R will be exactly "R as a GIS".

Unfortunately SQLiteMap, R package for accessing SpatiaLite, has been removed from CRAN since this September.

Any plan to employing  this SpatiaLite for current R-geo packages.

Thanks in advance.