At Digital Factory Paris, our mission is to design and produce innovative digital and phygital experiences that can be deployed on a large scale to optimise our customers' experience and increase their profitability. To achieve this, we have chosen to use Kivy, an open source Python framework, to develop our applications. Here's why this choice is strategic and beneficial for our projects.

What is Kivy?

Kivy is an open source framework for developing mobile and multitouch applications with natural user interfaces (NUIs). Distributed under an MIT licence, Kivy runs on several operating systems, including Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows. It uses the Python programming language, renowned for its simplicity and power.

Advantages of Kivy for Digital Factory Paris :

1. Versatility and rich interaction:

Kivy is designed specifically for multitouch interfaces, which goes far beyond simple smartphone applications. This feature enables the creation of rich and immersive user interactions, ideal for our innovative projects that combine digital and physical (phygital) experiences.

2. Performance and Visual Rendering:

One of Kivy's major assets is its use of GLES/OpenGL for graphics rendering, which gives it additional graphics flexibility. This enables hardware acceleration on all platforms, guaranteeing an identical visual appearance and high rendering performance. Kivy also offers detailed control over visual rendering through the use of the GLSL shader language, allowing pixel-perfect control of the visual appearance and the creation of sophisticated animations.

This ability to use the device's graphics card directly translates into smooth, responsive applications, which are essential for delivering an optimum user experience. But it also means the same visual appearance across all platforms, which is more complicated when using native widgets like React Native.

3. Simplicity and power of the Python language:

Python is renowned for its simplicity and readability, making it easy to develop applications quickly and efficiently. What's more, Kivy makes it easy to integrate native code into other languages using tools such as Cython (to interact with C), pyjnius (to access Java APIs on Android) and pyobjus (for Objective-C APIs on iOS). This interoperability greatly simplifies access to advanced system functions, such as using a smartphone's accelerometer or GPS. It also enables integration with external systems, such as our past use of the Jacare facial recognition system.

4. Broad compatibility:

The latest application we released is compatible with 18,767 models of Android phones and tablets. This broad compatibility is crucial to ensuring that our solutions reach as many users as possible, regardless of the device used.

5. Backward compatibility and sustainability:

Founded in 2008, Kivy benefits from a high level of maturity and backward compatibility. This means we can continue to support older devices while incorporating the latest features and enhancements.

The only real limitation comes from the policies of stores such as the Play Store or App Store, which regularly increase the minimum version required for updates or new application releases.

The longevity and stability of Kivy contrasts with the perception that technology is constantly changing and can be abandoned quickly. This reinforces our confidence in this framework for long-term projects. Unlike some more recent frameworks such as Flutter, Kivy has benefited from many years of continuous development.

6. Use of and contribution to Open Source Libraries :

For specific tasks such as decoding QRCodes, we use libraries such as pyzbar and zbarlight, which are based on libzbar coded in C. We have also contributed to these libraries to improve iOS compatibility and mobile optimisation. We also developed the pybabel integration for internationalisation management and the ffmpeg integration for transparent video decoding. These contributions demonstrate our commitment to the open source community and the continuous improvement of our tools.

Our opinion:

It's true that despite its advantages, Kivy sometimes suffers from a lack of notoriety compared to other frameworks with more widespread media coverage. Some may feel that the lack of support from a multinational is a disadvantage for Kivy, particularly those looking for solutions with more formal commercial support.

However, we have found that this independence gives us greater flexibility and total control over our projects. In addition, Kivy's easy access to native APIs allows us to perform the same actions as a 'standard' application on the target platform.

While Kivy's backward compatibility is an advantage, it can also be a challenge when it comes to keeping up with the industry's rapid technological developments and updates. For example, as mentioned earlier, application store requirements that may force us to fix or re-parameterise our CI pipeline can be a challenge.

Conclusion:

By using Kivy, we combine the simplicity and power of the Python language with advanced graphics capabilities and broad compatibility. This enables us to create high-performance, aesthetically consistent applications on all platforms, while offering rich, immersive user interactions. For the Digital Factory Paris, Kivy is more than just a development tool; it's a key part of our strategy to innovate and optimise our customers' experience.

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