cvs: /phpdoc/chapters intro.sgml

cslawi Wed Oct 20 18:46:27 1999 EDT Modified files: /phpdoc/chapters intro.sgml Log: Normalized & added &link.rasmus; in the history section. Index: phpdoc/chapters/intro.sgml diff -u phpdoc/chapters/intro.sgml:1.5 phpdoc/chapters/intro.sgml:1.6 --- phpdoc/chapters/intro.sgml:1.5 Thu Aug 19 16:16:44 1999 +++ phpdoc/chapters/intro.sgml Wed Oct 20 18:46:26 1999 @@ -5,10 +5,10 @@ <sect1 id="intro-whatis"> <title>What is PHP?</title> <simpara> - PHP is a server-side HTML-embedded scripting language. + PHP is a server-side HTML-embedded scripting language.</simpara> <para> - Simple answer, but what does that mean? An example: + Simple answer, but what does that mean? An example:</para> <para> <example> @@ -23,15 +23,15 @@ &lt;/body> &lt;/html> </programlisting> - </example> + </example></para> <para> Notice how this is different from a CGI script written in other languages like Perl or C -- instead of writing a program with lots of commands to output HTML, you write an HTML script with a some - embedded code to do something (in this case, output some text). The - PHP code is enclosed in special start and end tags that allow you - to jump into and out of "PHP mode". + embedded code to do something (in this case, output some + text). The PHP code is enclosed in special <link linkend="language.basic-syntax.phpmode">start and end tags</link> + that allow you to jump into and out of PHP mode.</para> <para> What distinguishes PHP from something like client-side Javascript @@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ the results of running that script, with no way of determining what the underlying code may be. You can even configure your web server to process all your HTML files with PHP, and then there's really no - way that users can tell what you have up your sleeve. + way that users can tell what you have up your sleeve.</para></sect1> <sect1 id="intro-whatcando"> <title>What can PHP do?</title> @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ <para> At the most basic level, PHP can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic - page content, or send and receive cookies. + page content, or send and receive cookies.</para> <para> Perhaps the strongest and most significant feature in PHP is its @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ web page is incredibly simple. The following databases are currently supported: <blockquote> - <simplelist columns=3> + <simplelist columns="3"> <member>Adabas D</member> <member>dBase</member> <member>Empress</member> @@ -72,17 +72,17 @@ <member>Velocis</member> <member>Unix dbm</member> </simplelist> - </blockquote> + </blockquote></para> <para> PHP also has support for talking to other services using protocols such as IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, or even HTTP. You can also open raw - network sockets and interact using other protocols. + network sockets and interact using other protocols.</para></sect1> <sect1 id="intro-history"> <title>A brief history of PHP</title> <simpara> - PHP was conceived sometime in the fall of 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. + PHP was conceived sometime in the fall of 1994 by &link.rasmus;. Early non-released versions were used on his home page to keep track of who was looking at his online resume. The first version used by others was available sometime in early 1995 and was known as @@ -94,34 +94,34 @@ Rasmus had written which interpreted html form data. He combined the Personal Home Page tools scripts with the Form Interpreter and added mSQL support and PHP/FI was born. PHP/FI grew at an amazing - pace and people started contributing code to it. + pace and people started contributing code to it.</simpara> <simpara> - It is hard to give any hard statistics, but it is estimated that - by late 1996 PHP/FI was in use on at least 15,000 web sites around - the world. By mid-1997 this number had grown to over 50,000. - Mid-1997 also saw a change in the development of PHP. It changed - from being Rasmus' own pet project that a handful of people had - contributed to, to being a much more organized team effort. The - parser was rewritten from scratch by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans - and this new parser formed the basis for PHP Version 3. A lot of - the utility code from PHP/FI was ported over to PHP3 and a lot of - it was completely rewritten. + It is difficult to give any hard statistics, but it is estimated + that by late 1996 PHP/FI was in use on at least 15,000 web sites + around the world. By mid-1997 this number had grown to over + 50,000. Mid-1997 also saw a change in the development of PHP. It + changed from being Rasmus' own pet project that a handful of + people had contributed to, to being a much more organized team + effort. The parser was rewritten from scratch by Zeev Suraski and + Andi Gutmans and this new parser formed the basis for PHP Version + 3. A lot of the utility code from PHP/FI was ported over to PHP3 + and a lot of it was completely rewritten.</simpara> <simpara> Today (mid-1999) either PHP/FI or PHP3 ships with a number of commercial products such as C2's StrongHold web server and RedHat - Linux and a conservative estimate based on an extrapolation from + Linux. A conservative estimate based on an extrapolation from numbers provided by NetCraft would be that PHP is in use on over 150,000 sites around the world. To put that in perspective, that is more sites than run Netscape's flagship Enterprise server on - the Internet. + the Internet.</simpara> <simpara> - Also as of this writing, work is underway on the next generation of - PHP that will utilize the powerful Zend scripting engine to deliver + Also as of this writing, work is underway on the next generation + of PHP, which will utilize the powerful <ulink url="http://www.zend.com">Zend</ulink> scripting engine to deliver higher performance, and will also support running under webservers - other than Apache as a native server module. + other than Apache as a native server module.</simpara></sect1> </chapter>