Have you considered hiring a developer to make these changes. Most developers will offer a discount if you then release the plugin back to the community. Try looking at joomlancers.com
If you are interested in this, I am sure that a lot of other people here would like to see these improvements, maybe you could suggest getting some money together from lots of people, if 20 people put in 15 Euros then that's 300 Euros, more than enough to pay for these changes to be made. Just a thought. Why not ask around and see if any body else would want to pay a little for these updates?