Sandman
There really is no standard RAW format, at least not used by the major manufacturers. They all have proprietary formats that has to be reverse-engineered by people that want to read them. That's why NX2 is the only application that can *write* to the RAW format.

Eric Stevens
As I understand it, an edited Nikon NEF file contains the original unedited RAW file plus a list of the camera's settings plus what is in effect a script of the edits that have been made since. The edits made by NX2 do not alter the RAW data but give instructions as to how it should be interpreted by NX2. The list of edits can be removed at a later date leaving only the RAW file. Alternatively multiple sets of edits can be stored in the saved NEF file. As far as I know all the non-Nikon applications other than NX2 which read an already edited NEF file ignore the embedded edits.