.. _doc_structure:

Book Structure
#################

After these preliminaries, we present |popy| in roughly three parts.

The first part, :ref:`user_guide_index`, is a tutorial-style
introduction to using |popy| that focusses on how |popy| is run at the 
command line for a given script whose structure is explained but whose 
specific content is not especially important.
This is what you *need* to know to start using |popy|.

The final part, :ref:`popy_reference_index`, we provide reference details that you 
don't *need* to know at first but might *want* to know as you become more familiar with
|popy| and how it works.

In between, we provide a series of "how to"-style guides that introduce 
|pkpd| concepts and their implementations in |popy|. 
These "recipes" focus on the *contents* of the scripts that define models, 
simulations, and parameter estimation settings in order to help you create
the models you need to better understand the data you have.

These recipes start simple, simulating data for only a single individual using
different |pkpd| models. Later recipes introduce parameter estimation (fitting)
and analysis of data from a population of individuals. The last "how-to" part 
helps users who are familiar with |nonmem|, the current market leader in NLME
for |pkpd|, to get started with |popy| by demonstrating equivalent scripts for
common models and fitters.