A Brief Introduction
========================

The program **atlas** provides access to its functions in
an `expression-oriented`_ fashion. 

The **atlas** program consists of an implementation for a general programming
language called :doc:`'axis' <axis>` (which we developed and is currently only used within
the Atlas Project), to whose general functionality are added a great number of
value types specific for **atlas**, and functions from its library operating upon
them. In this documentation, we try to refer to 'axis' for basic features
proper to the programming language, and 'atlas' for anything specific for the
**atlas** specific functionality, but the distinction may be ignored without harm.

.. _expression-oriented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression-oriented_programming_language