Would this be to escape from VisualEditor entirely (i.e., go back to view mode) or just to get out of the save dialog and back to the editor?

The user is asking to escape VE entirely.

Change 127004 had a related patch set uploaded by Alex Monk:
Add cancel & discard changes button to save dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/127004

It's really cool that Alex has added a patch, but I feel pretty confident this is a mistake. If you open a dialog and then hit cancel, you are going to believe it will close the dialog without taking action. This is a reasonable sounding request, but we really need to say no to this.

I'm not going to wontfix until other's chime in. Can anyone really make a case for why this is a good direction?

Agree with Trevor, also on basic grounds of minimizing clutter; we should only add this if there's user testing that shows users don't know how to cancel their edits.

Hmm... Yes, after thinking about this some more, I agree. Who wants to mark this wontfix?

I have.