[gnome-latex] Move history text from the wiki to the git repo

[Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet src gnome org>]

commit dc8137c85f6d1b8c3bd9460a1921c698d3e4ade4
Author: Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org>
Date:   Fri May 3 16:37:51 2019 +0200

    Move history text from the wiki to the git repo
    
    It has more chances to survive in Git. I'll maybe re-read it when I'm
    retired :-)

 HISTORY.md  | 81 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 Makefile.am |  1 +
 2 files changed, 82 insertions(+)
---
diff --git a/HISTORY.md b/HISTORY.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37d4ff5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/HISTORY.md
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+History of LaTeXila/GNOME LaTeX
+===============================
+
+I (Sébastien Wilmet) started LaTeXila because I wanted to work on a programming
+project during the summer (I was a student at that time). I didn't know which
+subject to choose, and I've chosen LaTeX because there was a lack of a good
+LaTeX editor based on GTK (i.e. well integrated to GNOME).
+
+The development started in August 2009, in the C language. In the following
+months a few versions were released (0.0.1, 0.0.2, 0.1 and 0.2). It had all the
+major basic features, and worked quite well. On the other hand, the code
+architecture was a disaster, due to a lack of experience and a lack of a good
+and recent GLib/GTK introduction for the C language (something that I've now
+fixed by writing
+[this guide](https://people.gnome.org/~swilmet/glib-gtk-book/)).
+Since I like statistics: at the time of the 0.2 version there was 200 Git
+commits and 10k lines of C code. The project was hosted entirely on
+SourceForge.
+
+In June 2010 I started the rewrite of LaTeXila in Vala. Vala seemed easier,
+with a good tutorial and the ability to write Object-Oriented code easily.
+LaTeXila 2.0 was released in November 2010. It had all the features of the 0.2
+version, plus many improvements. The Git repository was hosted on GitHub, but
+the project homepage and downloads were still on SourceForge. The 0.2 -> 2.0
+transition reflects the rewrite in Vala. Numbering that version “1.0” was not
+suitable, because it would have been seen as an achievement of the 0.x series.
+Also, with the 2.0 version number, the GNOME version numbering scheme has been
+adopted (even/odd minor version for stable/unstable releases). So the 2.0
+version was the achievement of the Vala rewrite, but at the same time a new
+beginning for the future of LaTeXila.
+
+In February-June 2011, I worked on LaTeXila as part of a project for my studies
+(for my end of bachelor studies project, for which I've had a good grade,
+20/20 :p). In the summer 2011, the project was moved to gnome.org, after
+reading [this series of articles](http://blogs.gnome.org/johannes/2010/06/04/why-gnome-org/).
+GitHub was not convenient for handling translations. During
+that period I've also read the book Code Complete
+([blog post](http://blogs.gnome.org/swilmet/2012/08/01/about-code-quality-and-maintainability/)),
+which improved a lot my programming skills. That's why there has been a lot of
+code cleanups during that summer and the next summer.
+
+With time LaTeXila has seen more and more features. During the summer 2012,
+another notable change is the switch from CMake to Autotools for the build
+system ([blog post](http://blogs.gnome.org/swilmet/2012/09/05/switch-from-cmake-to-autotools/)).
+In 2012 I also started to contribute to GtkSourceView, because there were some
+bugs in the completion system. And with LaTeXila in good shape, I wanted to
+work on something else. I've done a Google Summer of Code in 2013 for
+GtkSourceView. Since I was more or less the only developer of LaTeXila, there
+was less activity in LaTeXila. But the work in GtkSourceView is of course
+beneficial for LaTeXila.
+
+In September 2014, LaTeXila has made a jump from the 2.12 version to 3.14, to
+finally have the same versions as GNOME. It is easier to know with which GNOME
+version a certain LaTeXila version was developed against.
+
+For the 3.16 version, in March 2015, the build tools engine has been completely
+re-written in C, to have more robust and modern code, with a better code
+architecture. By contributing to GtkSourceView, I've learned how to write
+Object-Oriented code in C with the GObject library. And over time I was less
+and less happy with Vala, I prefer C/GObject for developing a GTK application
+or library. So I've started a rewrite of LaTeXila in C, but not a complete
+rewrite like it was the case for the 2.0 version in Vala, since from the Vala
+code it is possible to use features developed in C. So starting with the 3.16
+version some chunks of code have been progressively rewritten in C/GObject,
+fully documented with GTK-Doc comments and GObject Introspection annotations.
+
+In March 2015, a first fundraiser has been launched. More than €1000 has been
+raised, which permitted me to improve the spell-checking and to start the
+development of the gspell library. (I was no longer a student at that time).
+
+In September 2016, a second fundraiser has been launched in parallel with a
+gspell fundraiser.
+
+TODO: continue history with the creation of the Tepl and Amtk libraries, the
+rename of LaTeXila to GNOME LaTeX, and the upcoming 10 years anniversary.
+
+That's the end for now. I hope there will be other important events to relate.
+And *you* can be part of this history!
+
+Thanks to all contributors of GNOME LaTeX: developers, translators, packagers,
+designers, donors and everybody else!
diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 144f0a0..4f139b6 100644
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS =        \
 EXTRA_DIST =                   \
        gnome-latex.doap        \
        HACKING                 \
+       HISTORY.md              \
        intltool-extract.in     \
        intltool-merge.in       \
        intltool-update.in