I'm horrified (well, not horrified, but pretty upset) to discovered that named gradients will no longer be in Inkscape 0.46.

What this means is that when you apply the same gradient to more than one object, if you edit the gradient the colour change will only apply to the selected object. The change will not propogate through to the other objects that use the same gradient.

This will have an enormous impact on my ability to work with Inkscape. The colours I select when I first start colouring a drawing are rarely, if ever the same colours the drawing ends with. I am constantly tweaking the gradients I use to colour a drawing. When you're colouring a complicated objects, such as a human body, it is quite handy to be able to change the gradient you use for skin and all skin related objects (hands, arms, legs, 10 fingers, etc) will adopt the new colour. It becomes even more advandageous when my colouring method involves layer many gradients, for the base colour, ambient colour, shadows, hilights and other colour effects all using named gradients so I can easily tweak the colours throughout a drawing.

This method of working will be unmanageable in 0.46. Rosros's clever idea of using a gradient with one colour stop to simulated a named flat colour will no longer work.

I should point out that the developers have not made this change out of spite. They feel the current method confuses too many people who are new to Inkscape. I don't disagree with this. But I do think that removing features does not make Inkscape better. What do you guys think?

After a few messages on the Dev mailing list, I believe an option will be introduce to disable or enable the behaviour. So, phew!

I'm hoping this could be made a per gradient setting so some gradients can remain unique to the object, whilst others remain a global gradient.

Good to hear they're at least keeping it as an option. Like you, I like being able to edit one gradient and affect multiple objects. Having it per gradient sounds like a good way to go to me.