requests can be made at any time, it's just not likely they'll be attended for the next release at this point...
you can also open requests on github if you will, though it's nice to have them discussed on the list.
By the way, I've been actually doing some work regarding consistency issues between atom boxes and iemguis. Christoph recently mentioned how they could give us a visual cue they're active and I went for an idea. Miller ended up implementing the same idea in a different way. It's on the test release already ;) so it's kinda random, sometimes something can go in right away, take almost forever, or just get rejected :)
cheers