Allow me to clarify the situation. In the Desktop Notification Specification there is nothing to suggest that the expire_timeout parameter is optional. https://developer.gnome.org/notification-spec/#commands
The devs for gnome-shell and notifyOSD have taken it upon themselves to silently(!) ignore the parameter in their server implementation. There is a comment in the code for gnome-shell that states this, but IMHO that is not the right way to deal with this. I can see two logical solutions: 1) Fix gnome-shell and notifyOSD to conform to the spec. ie. stop ignoring the expire_timeout parameter. This implies modifications to the code (see aforementioned patch) and no modification to the spec. 2) Change the spec to explicitly advertise support for expiration timeout via a server capability eg. if "expire-timeout" does not appear in the list returned by org.freedesktop.Notifications.GetCapabilities() then the client will _know_ that the expire_timeout parameter will be ignored because the server does not support it. This solution would imply no modifications to the code for gnome-shell/notifyOSD (they will not have expire-timeout published in capabilities, therefore ignoring the expire_timeout parameter becomes perfectly logical and expected.) It will however require changes to the spec and probably to various other client and server implementations. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/390508 Title: notifyOSD ignores the expire timeout parameter To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/390508/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs