This idea is now listed as Under Consideration. I don't know how long it has been listed as such. However, I was told by a ESRI rep at a conference that if they move it to Under Consideration then that means they are going to do it if they can.
I was at the International conference in the early 2000's. Jack D was doing the plenary session and was talking about the next release of ArcGIS coming out was going to focus mainly on improving existing features and tools based on user input. I think it was the version in which Maplex was introduced.
I really think they need to do that again. There are hundreds of little user suggested improvements to existing tools and functions that they could focus on to make the use of ArcGIS a better experience.
I was at the UC last week. At the closing session, Jack said, “I think by next summer most of you will be running on Pro.” Pro lets you do this. Even though they’re very clear they’ll be supporting Desktop for a while, I seriously doubt they are going to put the effort into retrofitting it for this feature. I’m guessing it would be a major code change.
