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Navigating the source code {#code_overview}

This is an overview of Pencil2D code base.

Projects

The whole project is organized into 3 sub-projects:

  • app: holding everything about the GUI, e.g, tool panel, color wheel and Timeline etc.
  • core_lib: the engine of Pencil2D, mostly about animation, drawing things and tool manipulations.
  • tests: a collection of unit tests.

You will be able to see these 3 sub-projects in QtCreator when you open the Pencil2D project, and you will find the identical folder names in the repository. Each sub-project folder is further divided into several directories containing different kinds of sources:

  • src: holds the C++ source code that controls the program logic
  • ui: %Qt Designer GUI definitions (*.ui).
  • data: contains other resources such as images or support files for OS integration which are distributed with the program. Many of these are compiled into the program as %Qt resources.

Where to start with?

At the time of writing, there are nearly 200 source files in the Pencil2D repository. But at the beginning you only have to pay attention at a few of them, these main classes formed the backbone of Pencil2D. If you know how these classes work, you will be able to pick up Pencil2D code base very soon.

Let's start from app/src/main.cpp, it is the entry point of Pencil2D (and most of other C++ programs as well). There are a lot of command line parameter handling code, just ignore them at the moment. What you need to know is it creates the MainWindow2 at line 215 MainWindow2 mainWindow;

The MainWindow2, as the name said, is the main window of Pencil2D. The whole application starts here. Go to [MainWindow2's constructor](@ref MainWindow2::MainWindow2), you will see the Pencil2D's initialization process. It introduces some most important classes of Pencil2D, @ref Object, @ref Editor, and @ref ScribbleArea.

Object

Editor

ScribbleArea