Dynamic swatches to replace palettes

[Spacetoast]

The only major problems with Inkscape's workflow have to do with fill and
stroke selection. Without an object selected, the Fill and Stroke window
is greyed out, preventing the user from selecting a style prior to working
in it. This is fairly logical from a programmatic object/attributes
standpoint, but to an artist it's very back-to-front -- we don't expect to
begin drawing with a crayon and then change it to a marker. Likewise, in
everyday drawing one tends to flip back and forth between a few
commonly-used styles, but the only way to return to a style in Inkscape is
to draw a path, select another object containing the desired style, copy,
reselect the new object, and paste the style into it.

Replacing the color swatches at the bottom of the window with dynamic
swatches made up of previously-used styles -- including fill, stroke,
opacity, blur, etc. -- could improve Inkscape's workflow a great deal. The
current swatches take up a great deal of space onscreen but only serve to
duplicate part of the Fill and Stroke window's functionality.

With dynamic swatches, making changes in the Fill and Stroke window with no
object selected would create a new swatch. Clicking on a previous swatch
would bring it back to the first position and assign its style to the next
object drawn. I've put together a mockup of what this might look like.

About me:
I am a commercial artist based in Cambridge, MA., with clients including
the Museum of Science Boston and Miva Direct, Inc.

Inkscape art:
http://www.spacetoast.net/STP/sketchbook/WomenChart.html
http://www.spacetoast.net/STP/sketchbook/sketchbook.html
http://www.spacetoast.net/STP/sketchbook/podcast.html

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

I just had some similar thoughts, it could be a good time-saver!