1 Introduction
 1.1 What is this book about?
 1.2 Why write my own software?
 1.3 How this book works
 1.4 What will I be able to do after reading this?
2 Getting started
 2.1 Introduction
 2.2 Interface files
 2.3 Compiling your applications – The alink command
 2.4 Section summary
3 The basics of the IMG library
 3.1 Example 1 – A “do nothing" code
 3.2 Example 2 – Opening and closing files
 3.3 About the IMG library
 3.4 Really getting to your data (or data mapping)
 3.5 Putting it all together – Complete applications
 3.6 Example 3 – Processing data values
 3.7 Output from applications
 3.8 Example 4 – Updating a file
 3.9 Example 5 – Creating a new file
4 Accessing header information
 4.1 Example 6 – Reading a header item
5 Accessing different file formats
 5.1 The Convert package
 5.2 Getting your code to read different file formats
6 Summary of part one
7 Using the NDF library calls
 7.1 Example 7 – Using NDF library calls to update an NDF
 7.2 Creating a new NDF
 7.3 Example 8a – Creating a new NDF (the bare essentials)
 7.4 Example 8b – Putting a title into the NDF
 7.5 Example 8c – Creating a data and variance array in an NDF
8 Variances, bad pixels, and quality – The art of error propagation
 8.1 Processing a variance array
 8.2 Example 9 – A code which does not propagate the variance array
 8.3 Example 10 – A code which DOES propagate the variance array
 8.4 The Quality component
 8.5 Rules for propagation of variance arrays
9 NDF extensions
 9.1 Example 11 – Reading an extension
 9.2 Example 12 – Creating a new extension
10 Making your own software package
 10.1 Monoliths
 10.2 Example 13 – A monolith
11 Compiling code without ADAM
12 Miscellaneous
 12.1 A brief word about axes
 12.2 Starlink libraries
 12.3 Hints for writing good applications
 12.4 Documenting your code
 12.5 Portability
 12.6 Submitting code to Starlink
A Useful resources
 A.1 Useful libraries and commands
 A.2 Further reading
B Glossary