Comment 8 for bug 340996

I made some modifications to notify-osd for my own use a while ago. I've since written about these change and released the source code and a Debian package on my site. Note that this is more a temporary work around, which increases the display time to 10 seconds from 5, than a proper patch.

http://divineomega.co.uk/ubuntu/modifications-to-the-notification-system-of-ubuntu-904/

I agree that the notifications should stay on screen longer dependant upon the number of lines displayed in the notification, as per the original Notify-OSD specification on the Ubuntu wiki.