I already answered Andrew in developer chat, but just repeating here because it is probably good if more people know:
- This would be great functionality to add.
- It was not done from the start, because it better to get improvements into Moodle as a series of small steps - and even the basic feature added here had to be quite a big step, so took some time to get in.
- Before working on this, it might be good to have a chat with someone who knows a bit about the gradebook from a developer's point of view.
- While it might make sense to start by adding this as a plugin, while we work out what code is required, unlimately, we almost certainly want to add this funcionality to the standard Moodle package.