Comment 29 for bug 390508

wirespot, the variable durations are not implemented yet. Once they are, you'll find that "Screen saver ON" will display for 5 seconds rather than the current 10, which should be much less annoying.

Adrian Roman, this has little if anything to do with "users' freedom to alter the environment", because the timeout parameter is for application developers, not end users. We think we can set more consistent and reliable durations for users automatically than diverse application developers ever could manually. Calculating the appropriate duration will be *more work* for us than simply heeding the timeout parameter, but we think it will be worth it. For your remote control work, which sounds very cool, I suggest you either (1) enhance notify-send (or find someone to do it) so that you, and anyone else, can set replaces_id, (2) use a scripting language that lets you set replaces_id instead of using a shell script, or (3) if you really want a challenge, work out how to integrate the remote control volume changes into gnome-settings-daemon so that it generates the standard volume bubbles instead of notification bubbles.

Marco Chiappero, it is true that expire_timeout is not part of the Hints table and therefore not explicitly optional, though I could get all RFC-2119 about it and point out that the definition of expire_timeout uses the word "should" rather than "must". We are fortunate that the Desktop Notifications Specification was flexible enough to allow what we wanted for notifications in Ubuntu, so we didn't need to fork it.

movaxes, showing synchronous things like which workspace you've just switched to would be a misuse of notifications, which are for asynchronous things. But provided you follow the software license, you're welcome to adapt the Notify OSD code for your own synchronous overlays.

Justin Clift, if your application is distributed in an official Ubuntu archive or a PPA, you can expect unfavorable ratings and reviews in future if installing it produces ugly notifications not just in your application but in every other application too. And regardless of how the package is distributed, the Ubuntu Software Center will issue a warning if installing it involves uninstalling anything else (such as notify-osd). If you are more specific about what you want, designers could help you find a more harmonious solution; I suggest mailing the Ayatana mailing list <https://launchpad.net/~ayatana> with details.