Kivy for business applications

[blaine]

hi guys. i'm considering a new project for a lightweight JSON-enabled mobile application. I'm a huge python fan and just getting into mobile development. Would you consider Kivy as a good framework for a networked 'business' / non-graphical cross platform app? 

some questions i have:

1. what risk is there for future iOS or android versions breaking Kivy? how quick can Kivy compensate when new versions are released? 

2. what kind of "out of the box" support for reasonably well behaving and looking widgets? in other words, how much work is it to get an app to look relatively native, like a clean well behaving native app?

3. i found this instructional on getting the iPhone simulator to work. Does anyone know much about this or recommend it? https://github.com/kivy/kivy-ios

4. academic: what's stopping the use of c++ and other native libraries that could be accessed through cython? does anyone do that? sounds like it'd be at least theoretically possible. i don't need c++ support but I do have some cython projects that use c++, curious if they would work with kivy.

thanks! -Blaine

[Mathieu Virbel]

Hi blaine,

Kivy is already used in some companies, such as Fresk.co,
Meltingrocks.com, Rentouch.ch, Devocite.com, Showgen.com...
The next website will contain a list of the current company using Kivy
in their products.

One example of a successful ios/android/win/osx product is ProcessCraft
on showgen.com for example.

I'm answering all the remaining point in your email

Le 10/09/2012 23:40, blaine a �crit :

> hi guys. i'm considering a new project for a lightweight JSON-enabled
> mobile application. I'm a huge python fan and just getting into mobile
> development. Would you consider Kivy as a good framework for a networked
> 'business' / non-graphical cross platform app?
>
> some questions i have:
>
> 1. what risk is there for future iOS or android versions breaking Kivy?
> how quick can Kivy compensate when new versions are released?

Relatively moderate. If something is broken and if you see it first,
just open an issue, we'll resolve it asap. And you can always use the
"master" for development. There is no impact in your production app,
because Kivy is packaged with along your app. So you are controling the
update of Kivy + your app.

> 2. what kind of "out of the box" support for reasonably well behaving
> and looking widgets? in other words, how much work is it to get an app
> to look relatively native, like a clean well behaving native app?

I think the behavior is great, and don't require change. If you miss a
behavior that you seem "standard", just tell us. If you want something
specialized, it's �ber easy to create your own.
As for the "look" part, we try to get a set of widget working well
together. But you can also make your own theme/widget set, as
ProcessCraft does (like for a menubar with button, they are all 44px
height, 12px font size, etc.)
The theming doesn't change between the platform.

> 3. i found this instructional on getting the iPhone simulator to work.
> Does anyone know much about this or recommend
> it? https://github.com/kivy/kivy-ios

We maintain severals projects around Kivy: That's what the Kivy
organisation does: python-for-android, kivy, pyjnius, kivy-ios,
kivy-berkelium etc.

On that case, take a look at our packaging instruction in the
Programming Guide: http://kivy.org/docs/guide/packaging.html
The ios version use kivy-ios, while android use our python-for-android.

> 4. academic: what's stopping the use of c++ and other native libraries
> that could be accessed through cython? does anyone do that? sounds like
> it'd be at least theoretically possible. i don't need c++ support but I
> do have some cython projects that use c++, curious if they would work
> with kivy.

Some part of Kivy are in Cython. In fact, it's our prefered approach,
and always try to do/redo thing in cython instead of ctypes
(kivy-berkelium, audiostream, cymunk...).

But, we currently support cython only when you build an external library
(called a recipe in python-for-android), because the packaging is done
in 2 step: first the toolchain compilation, second the python packaging.
Currently, only the first part support compilation, so if you seperate
the c++ part in an external library, that's ok :) Just browse the
recipes directory to see others libraires that works with the same approach.


Good luck!

Mathieu