1<sect1 id="sect-about-history"> 2 <title>The History of Gnumeric</title> 3 4 <para> 5 &gnum; was created in <date>August, 1998</date> 6 by 7 <author> 8 <firstname>Miguel</firstname> 9 <surname>de Icaza</surname> 10 </author> 11 almost a year after starting the GNOME Desktop project. 12 13 Historically the spreadsheet was a killer application, an application 14 so useful it gave businesses the reason they needed to buy computers. 15 16 Similarly &gnum; gives people a great reason to 17 choose GNOME. 18 &gnum; also provided a valuable opportunity for 19 developers to stress test various technologies needed for the GNOME Desktop. 20 21 <!-- 22 Background information: 23 Article on Linuxplanet.com quoted Miguel as saying Gnumeric 24 was development was started in part to stress test the canvas widget 25 http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/3989/1/ 26 --> 27 28 Miguel eventually moved on to other projects after founding software 29 development company Ximian. 30 31 </para> 32 33 <para> 34 <!-- 35 Early days, instability, need to develop technologies as they went along 36 --> 37 38 </para> 39 40 <para> 41 <author><firstname>Jody</firstname> <surname>Goldberg</surname></author> 42 became the maintainer of <application>Gnumeric</application> midway through 43 <date>2000</date> in recognition of the work he was doing. 44 </para> 45 46 <!-- 47 This is just a start, but obviously a whole lot more needs to be written 48 before this can be linked to from the index again. 49 50 Hopefully this document should in some small way inspire people to get 51 involved rather than becoming a tedious Changelog or list of credits. 52 53 more things that could be added: 54 short notes on 55 bonobo infrastucture 56 guppi framework 57 58 other milestones? 59 60 gnome office worth mentioning? 61 short noted on the shadow cast by OpenOffice? 62 63 --> 64 <para> 65 &gnum; reached a major milestone on 66 <date>December 31, 2001</date> with the successful release of Version 1.0. 67 </para> 68 69 <para> 70 Who knows what the future will bring for &gnum;. 71 There is still more history that has not yet been written. 72 </para> 73 74</sect1> 75 76