Comment 76 for bug 390508

> Yes, but those abilities are not possible with notify-send.

so there is an another way to fix your issue there which is to improve notify-send or have a notify-osd-send handling those

> to see which current device is active unless I pause for 5 seconds each time I want to switch devices. This makes notify-send totally useless.

that's a fair point but notify-osd doesn't force you to wait, see what happens when changing tracks with a music player on lucid, the limitation there is not with what notify-osd let you do but rather with the notify-send command

> It seems as if the Ubuntu UI developers have a deep seated inability to contemplate the possibility that other people have useful and productive things to say.

What does that mean exactly? This comment doesn't seem especially constructive in reply to a question which aims at understanding your needs to try to solve the issue... Why can't we have something looking nice and behaving in a consitant way there which still working correctly? You failed so far at showing the need of notify-osd changes there