WM Spec 1.0

December 9, 2000

On behalf of freedesktop.org, the GNOME Project, and the KDE Project, I'm happy to announce that version 1.0 of the freedesktop.org extended window manager hints specification (EWMHS) is now available. This document specifies extensions to the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) which allow desktop environments to implement features such as pagers, task lists, or full-color icons via communication with the window manager.

The EWMHS has already been implemented by many window managers, including kwin and Sawfish, the window managers associated with the KDE and GNOME projects. We believe the specification is an important step forward in X desktop interoperability, achieved thanks to the collaborative spirit of the free software community.

You can find the EWMHS at http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/wm-spec.html.

This spec is the first document produced by freedesktop.org, and was developed with the help of window manager developers, GNOME developers, KDE developers, and X Window System developers. The following contributors are listed in the Credits section of the specification:

• Sasha Vasko
• Bradley T. Hughes
• Dominik Vogt
• Havoc Pennington
• Jeff Raven
• Jim Gettys
• John Harper
• Julian Adams
• Matthias Ettrich
• Micheal Rogers
• Nathan Clemons
• Tim Janik
• Tomi Ollila
• Sam Lantinga
• The Rasterman
• Paul Warren
• Owen Taylor
• Marko Macek
• Greg Badros
• Matthias Clasen
• David Rosenthal

Special thanks to Trolltech for sponsoring Bradley T. Hughes's work on the specification and a Qt-independent sample implementation now used by KDE 2.0. Also, special thanks to Julian Adams for doing a lot of organizational and editorial work to move the spec forward.

Thanks to everyone who helped with this effort!