.. Copyright 2009-2012 Peter Williams

   This file is part of miriad-python.

   Miriad-python is free software: you can redistribute it and/or
   modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
   published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
   License, or (at your option) any later version.

   Miriad-python is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
   WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
   General Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
   along with miriad-python.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

.. highlight:: python

.. _intro:
.. sectionauthor:: Peter Williams <peter@newton.cx>

An Introduction to miriad-python
================================

*miriad-python* is a framework for interacting with the
`MIRIAD <http://bima.astro.umd.edu/miriad/>`_ radio interferometry
package via the `Python <http://www.python.org/>`_ programming
language. It offers three main groups of tools, used for:

* :ref:`reading and using MIRIAD data files in Python <data>`.
* :ref:`executing existing MIRIAD tasks <executing>`.
* :ref:`writing your own MIRIAD tasks in Python <pytasks>`.

You should get started by reading about :ref:`high-level access to
datasets <datahighlev>`.