Here is an update on my patch:

Graham contacted me and asked for permission to put my email with the patch on the GPE mailing list for discussion, which I granted. There has been a few replies so far, most seem positive. The only concern that has been brought up is whether this will negatively effect battery life, as home plugins don't have the best track record in this area - especially ones that monitor or actively update.

There has also been talk about getting rid of the "iconify on close" feature with this patch implemented, which has also been well received. Graham suggested making this change conditional on having GPE Summary running - thus if summary is running it will "close on close" and if summary is not running it will "iconify on close".

I am going to take a look at a couple more outstanding bugs/requests to see if there is anything I can do about them.