# Jonquil guide

Jonquil is a Clojure IDE written in Jolt, in the style of DrRacket. You
write code in the Definitions editor, press Run, and the results show in
the Interactions console below it. Stop ends a running program, even one
stuck in a loop.

New to Jonquil? The `README.md` in the repository root shows the window
and builds it in one command. These pages cover the rest: how each feature
works, the languages Jonquil runs, and how it's put together.

## Read in this order

1. **[Getting started](getting-started.md)**: install Jolt and GTK4,
   build and run Jonquil, and find where its saved settings live.
2. **Using Jonquil**, in these pages:
   - [Using Jonquil](using-jonquil.md): the window, Run versus the REPL
     prompt, stdin, Stop, Reset on Run, editing, find and replace, themes.
   - [Files and tabs](files-and-tabs.md): Open and Save, tabs, Finder and
     the Dock, the file tree.
   - [Help and the inspector](help-and-inspector.md): completion, quick
     doc, jump, rename, the palette, inspecting values, the last
     error's frames, the restarts, Break on error and breakpoints.
   - [Dialects and runtimes](dialects/index.md): choosing a dialect and
     running Jolt out of process, then a page each for
     [ClojureDart](dialects/clojuredart.md),
     [JVM Clojure](dialects/jvm-clojure.md),
     [ClojureScript](dialects/clojurescript.md),
     [any other nREPL server](dialects/other-nrepl.md) and
     [jank](dialects/jank.md).
   - [Plugins](plugins.md), [Driving Jonquil from an agent](mcp.md),
     [Keys](keys.md) and [Known limits](known-limits.md).
   - [Lisp Machine ideas, and Emacs](lisp-machine.md): where Describe
     Key, the locations list and timing a form come from, and how Jonquil
     compares with Emacs.
3. **[Development](development.md)**: the task groups `jolt info` prints,
   the unit suite, the self-test and binary-smoke harnesses, screenshots,
   and lint, format, and the git hooks.
4. **[Architecture](architecture/index.md)**: the namespace layers, why GTK is
   only ever required from `jonquil.main` and `jonquil.mcp.window`, the inspector and the eval
   engine, with pages for [commands, keys and plugins](architecture/commands-keys-plugins.md),
   [MCP](architecture/mcp.md), [dialects](architecture/dialects.md),
   [attached](architecture/attached-runtimes.md) and
   [launched](architecture/launched-runtimes.md) runtimes, and
   [macOS and Linux](architecture/macos-and-linux.md).
5. **[Porting and attribution](porting-and-attribution.md)**: what came
   from DrClojure, what Jonquil rebuilt instead, and the Jolt fixes this
   project needed along the way.
6. **[Contributing](contributing.md)**: the local setup a change needs,
   the gates it must pass, and how to send it.

`CHANGELOG.md` lists what changed, and `UPSTREAM.md` holds the
file-by-file provenance table that Porting and attribution summarizes.