Fram:About

From Fram

"Fram" is a ship built in 1892 that safely carried the Norwegian polar explorers Nansen, Sverdrup and Amundsen into the unknown and back again. Our "Fram" is meant to do the same thing for your free (as in freedom) software project. Through the principles of literate programming, using only a browser, we believe it gives developers, artists, documenters and translators a swifter and safer voyage for reaching their destination collaboratively. "Fram" is a Norwegian word, meaning "Forward".

Our "Fram" will be built as a set of extensions for the highly scalable and easily deployable free (as in freedom) software solution Mediawiki of Wikipedia fame, and gives the following capabilites:

• easily switch between writing source code and explanations in the same article, and then extract and download the source code for interpretation in the case of interpreted languages, like Perl scripts, or compilation, like in the case of C and Java.
• use Mediawiki categories and subcategories to structure your free software project according to The GNU Coding Standards to make the GNU system clean, consistent, and easy to install, and then use our enhanced export extension to download your project in a convenient archive file, just like you would download any other source package. Our export extension turns Mediawiki categories and subcategories into directories and subdirectories containing your source files. Naturally, you are free to follow your own coding standards in non-GNU projects. However, The GNU Coding Standards can also be read as a guide to writing portable, robust and reliable programs, and is thus highly recommended reading. It focuses on programs written in C, but many of the rules and principles are useful even if you write in another programming language. The rules often state reasons for writing in a certain way.
• reuse articles in other projects just by adding the correct categories.
• translators can leverage the full strength of GNU gettext, allowing different plural forms in languages like Arabic and Polish.
• documenters can easily look at your code and your explanations when creating user manuals.
• artists can upload and update multimedia.
• your free software team can use familiar Mediawiki capabilities to spot changes, discuss articles, require authentication or authorization, and you can easily add your own extensions, like syntax coloring or spell-checking.
• "Fram" makes it easy for both full and part time contributors to participate in your free software project.

"Fram" is located at http://far.no/fram, easily remembered if you read Norwegian as "Far no fram!", meaning "Now go forward!"