Selecting different objects sometimes causes the Fill and Stroke dialog to forget that a gradient has been applied (cannot determine exact steps to reproduce, but it may involve grouping or reloading files). When this happens, a gradient button has to be clicked again to enable the Edit button, which upon clicking then duplicates the previously selected gradient, and opens an edit dialog for the newly applied instance.
Dragging inner gradient markers also implicitly duplicates the selected gradient instance. In even a medium-sized project, it takes no time for the gradient selection dropdown to be cluttered with hundreds of nearly-identical gradients with non-descriptive names, most of which were entirely unnecessary and unexpected. In many cases, the result is unintended and undesired inconsistency. In my opinion, this is worse and makes the document much harder to manage than the alternative of possibly unintended impact on other objects sharing the original gradient.
Expected behavior:
Fill and Stroke dialog should always remember what has already been applied to an object, but regardless of this hard-to-track implementation bug, the gradient selection and editing behavior should be more consistent.
- Choosing a gradient type in Fill and Stroke should select the last-used gradient instead of a dummy new one that will disappear if selection is altered (with exception for when there are currently no gradients at all).
- Clicking the edit button should never take any action other than to edit the currently selected gradient (often objects were selected or assigned a pre-existing gradient just to get an edit window for that gradient).
- Editing gradients, whether on canvas, through the Edit window, or some other means, should never assume a new unique instance is desired. If anything, there should only be a first-time warning on editing a gradient applied to more than one object.
Related opportunities for UI improvement:
Accessing the gradient editor should not require use of an object with a gradient applied. The gradient editing window should allow selecting the gradient being edited, and should be reachable by some other direct path. The prominence of such a task should also not require using the XML editor.
The Fill and Stroke dialog should also have a "New..." button for starting a gradient from scratch, rather than relying on undesirable side effects to get a fresh start.
Creating gradients should prompt for a descriptive name prefilled with the non-descriptive default, to make larger projects more bearable to maintain.
Duplicating an existing gradient (at least for those with a descriptive name) should either trigger a prompt for a new one or automatically derive one based on the name of the original (i.e. mySpecialGradient2).
Creating new gradients by duplication could automatically keep the original and its duplicates grouped in the XML. This could then be used for two-stage gradient selection (group then actual gradient), make large numbers of gradients easier to manage, and make gradient relationships more clear. More advanced intentions can tweak this organizational pattern by directly using the XML editor.
Almost forgot--using Inkscape 0.46 on Windows. Though no mention of gradient editing or Fill and Stroke behavior was made in the changelog, I'll be trying out 0.47 shortly.