diff --git a/appendices/history.xml b/appendices/history.xml index 577987cd8c..c8103d028a 100644 --- a/appendices/history.xml +++ b/appendices/history.xml @@ -1,14 +1,256 @@ - + - + + PHP 4 + + By the winter of 1998, shortly after PHP 3.0 was officially + released, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski have begun working + on a rewrite of PHP's core. The design goals were to improve + performance of complex applications, and improve the + modularity of PHP's code base. Such applications were made + possible by PHP 3.0's new features and support for a wide + variety of 3rd party databases and APIs, but PHP 3.0 was + not designed to handle such complex applications efficiently. + + + The new engine, dubbed 'Zend Engine' (comprised of their + first names, Zeev and Andi), met these design goals + successfully, and was first introduced in mid 1999. PHP 4.0, + based on this engine, and coupled with a wide range of + additional new features, was officially released in May + 2000, almost two years after its predecessor, PHP 3.0. + In addition to the highly improved performance of this + version, PHP 4.0 included other key features such as + support for many more Web servers, HTTP sessions, output + buffering, more secure ways of handling user input and + several new language constructs. + + + PHP 4 is currently the latest released version of PHP. Work + has already begun on modifying and improving the Zend Engine + to integrate the features which were designed for PHP 5.0. + + + Today, PHP is being used by hundreds of thousands of developers + (estimated), and several million sites report as having it + installed, which accounts for over 20% of the domains on the + Internet. + + + PHP's development team includes dozens of developers, as well + as dozens others working on PHP-related projects such as PEAR + and the documentation project. + + + + + + History of PHP related projects + + + PHP Documentation Project + + + + -PHP's history - Overview of PHP's development + + PEAR + + PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository (originally, + PHP Extension and Add-on Repository) is PHP's version of + foundation classes, and may grow in the future to be one + of the key ways to distribute both PHP and C-based PHP + extensions among developers. + + + PEAR was born in discussions held in the PHP Developers' + Meeting (PDM) held in January 2000 in Tel Aviv. It was + created by Stig S. Bakken, and is dedicated to his first-born + daughter, Malin Bakken. + + + Since early 2000, PEAR has grown to be a big, significant + project with a large number of developers working on + implementing common, reusable functionality for the + benefit of the entire PHP community. PEAR today includes + a wide variety of infrastructure foundation classes + for database access, content caching, mathematical + calculations, eCommerce and much more. + + + + + PHP Quality Assurance Initiative + + The PHP Quality Assurance Initiative was set up in the + summer of 2000 in response to criticism that PHP releases + were not being tested well enough for production + environments. The team now consists of a core group of + developers with a good understanding of the PHP code + base. These developers spend a lot of their time + localizing and fixing bugs within PHP. In addition + there are many other team members who test and + provide feedback on these fixes using a wide variety + of platforms. + + + + + PHP-GTK + + + + + + + + Books about PHP + + As PHP grew, it began to be recognized as a world-wide popular + development platform. One of the most interesting ways of + seeing this trend was by observing the books about PHP that + came out throughout the years. + + + To the best of our knowledge, the first book dedicated to + PHP was 'php- dynamische webauftritte professionell realisieren' + - a German book published in 1999, authored by Egon Schmid, + Christian Cartus and Richard Blume. The first book in English + about PHP was published shortly afterwards, and was 'Core + PHP Programming' by Leon Atkinson. Both of these books covered + PHP 3.0. + + + While these two books were the first of their kind - they were + followed by a large number of books from a host of authors and + publishers. There are over 40 books in English, 50 books in + German, and over 20 books in French! In addition, you can find + books about PHP in many other languages, including Spanish, + Korean, Japanese and Hebrew. + + + Clearly, this large number of books, written by different + authors, published by many publishers, and their availability + in so many languages - are a strong testimony for PHP's + world-wide success. + + + + + Publications about PHP + + To the best of our knowledge, the first article about PHP in + a hard-copy magazine was published in the French Informatiques + Magazine, towards the end of 1998, and covered PHP 3.0. As with + books, this was the first in a series of many articles published + about PHP in various prominent magazines. + + + Articles about PHP appeared in Dr. Dobbs, Linux Enterprise, + Linux Magazine and many more. Articles about migrating PHP-based + applications to PHP under Windows even appear on Microsoft's + very own MSDN! + + + +