Comment 20 for bug 722017

I am personally with you about favoring one method (on canvas). There is another issue though with the current implementation, editing the gradient if it's applied to multiple objects. If this is solveable in a sane way you can think of, awesome.

I have an idea about how this could be achieved with on-canvas editing, but it would definitely be "different". In effect, it would create a temporary overlay on top of the existing drawing with a temporary object and temporarily switch to the gradient tool, you do your "edit", when finished the temporary object is destroyed, canvas is back to how you expect, and previous tool is switched back to (meanwhile, all objects with said gradient reflect the new gradient). I can't do a mockup right now, but will see about it tonight or tomorrow if you're interested.