Figure out a way to *start* in-place editing inside a View — on a per-entity basis, just like elsewhere

Updated: Comment #0

Problem/Motivation

Edit.module's backport from Drupal 8 to Drupal 7 (see #2111667: Backport Drupal 8's Edit module to Drupal 7) has brought with it one huge, fundamental change: per-entity in-place editing, rather than page-wide. This is much better for usability, because it is abundantly clear at all times what you're editing. It also avoids the "an overwhelming sea of in-place editable things I can click on" problem. Per-entity in-place editing is triggered using a "Quick edit" contextual link.

A consequence though, exists for in-place editing of table/grid/… Views — i.e. fields that render individual fields (and hence use Views' render pipeline) rather than entire entities in a certain view mode (which uses the Entity/Field render pipeline, and hence of course already works just fine, even without this module).
That consequence is: there is no obvious way to start in-place editing of a given entity! Table or grid Views don't use contextual links for individual entities (there's only a contextual link for the entire View). But even if we'd have a contextual link for each entity in the View, then we still face significant problems:

• A given entity may consist of only a title. Then where do you display the contextual link for it?
• A given row in a table/grid/… View may contain fields of multiple entities (using Views' Relationships functionality)! So even a "Quick edit the entity in this row" solution is insufficient
• Many more things: #1962606-17: Quick Edit + "Field" Views (table, grid …).
• …

Proposed resolution

To be determined.

Remaining tasks

To be determined.

User interface changes

To be determined.

API changes

To be determined.