Comment 44 for bug 331369

Ryan, my analysis is not incompatible with your problem.

The positioning logic in notify-osd is not very sophisticated and TwinView, which the developers may not have been able to perform substantial testing under, introduces additional complications. One problem, which I described above, will occur if and only if there is no GNOME panel at the top of the screen. As you still have the top panel then you are experiencing a different bug arising from similar logic.

I like your idea, Oli, although I am not sure if there is a reliable way to query the GNOME desktop to locate the notification area. The method for locating just the panel is rather cumbersome, albeit reasonably reliable; each window on the desktop is iterated in an attempt to match one with a specific class name. Perhaps the maintainers can think of a way?

(There are additional structural problems in notify-osd which would need to be resolved to position the OSD at lower parts of the display. e.g. The height of the bubble is not currently known when the positioning logic is invoked, because it is not required when the bubble starts at the top and grows downwards.)