This chapter describes the user interfaces to MIRIAD . Each MIRIAD task has a number of parameters which can be specified. With some parameters, you must assign values to them when you run the task. With other parameters, if they are not set, a default value will be used, which may or may not be sufficient to run the task successfully.
There are two approaches to running tasks: the command-line approach and the front-end (or shell) approach.
With the command-line approach, you give the MIRIAD command directly at the system prompt, in the same way as any other operating system command, such as ls.
With the front-end approach, you interact with another program, which aids you in forming the command-line to a MIRIAD task. Although there are a number of front-ends, only one has survived time reasonably. This is the miriad front-end, which is generally appropriate for dumb terminals!
First we will describe the command-line interface in more detail, after which the miriad front-end will be discussed. Finally we discuss using scripts with MIRIAD .
If this is your first encounter with MIRIAD , we suggest you work your way through the examples starting in the next section.