We shall here present a draft of the framework  chapter of the evolving book manuscript on switcher semantics. The text will be distributed. The chapter presents the basic idea of semantic switching; informal notions of compositionality; the abstract semantic framework derived from work by Hodges (and earlier work by Westerståhl, Glüer and Pagin) and formal definitions of standard compositionality; formal definitions of general compositionality and switcher semantics; an application of switcher semantics to pure quotation (from work by Pagin and Westerståhl); discussion of synonymy and a combined semantic function; a discussion of the risk of triviality (partly based on work by Pagin and Westerståhl); a discussion of justification of general compositionality; remarks on historical antecedents; and brief discussions relevant earlier considerations on ingredient sense and semantic innocence (Dummett, Lewis, Davidson).