Is pointillism a frame? Pointillism is a technique to use when making paintings. A frame gives you a structure to put your painting inside of. It is not a coincidence that the word "framework" contains the word "frame". BrowserUK's definition was not just "more verbose". It was also certainly less vague. It made great points about the type of structure a framework is.

I'll either somewhat disagree with or somewhat augment what BrowserUK said by saying that his definition sounds like what I would call an "application framework" and there certainly could be a "library framework". But a "library framework" would need to define the "outer shell" and over-all structure of the library and provide ways for people to put different guts inside of that. And the term "framework" as applied to software is most often used to mean "application framework" (IMHO, of course).

I'm unsure whether using "framework" for non-application frameworks is desirable / useful terminology. Certainly, people shouldn't be afraid of developing software in a structured manner, though.

¹ Update: Ooh, that could be taken quite harshly; like I was saying Ovid is worse than an idiot. That certainly wasn't my intent and I apologize. I certainly don't belive Ovid is an idiot. I think Ovid should re-read BrowserUK's description. And I made note of the fact that one anonymous reply re-stressing part of the distinction that I think Ovid may not have fully appreciated.