Window Managers Standards

EWMH (Extended Window Manager Hints) is the primary active standard available right now that isn't tied to a specific desktop. A few WMs support GNOME or KDE - and at least KDE tries to support EWMH, while GNOME is built on the much older ICCCM.

• Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH)
• GNOME
• ICCCM - Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) (only available on dead trees?)
• KDE
• Motif - hard to find a link for this as it's still partly proprietary, but it's not really supported anywhere anymore.
• NetWM - since nearly all EWMH protocols start with "_NET_WM_", this has become another name for EWMH.
• XDND

http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications - freedesktop.org's discussion of specifications: "These are not really standards."