Pedal "carat" markings do not align

Yes, it is true I don't want the "Ped" text. That's what I said I end of the original report.

You are correct that depending on which lines you use, which note you attach them to, and whether or not you delete the text, you get different wrong answers. But you pretty much never get the correct answer.

How about a few pictures?

Here's how I think the palette should look:

I'm actually not so sure the first one needs to be there, but it's the only one I think it makes to include the Ped symbol on. The other four definitely need to be there, and they should *not* include the Ped symbol.

Here's how the carat *should* look when positioned under the first note of a measure (the most common place you'd expect to see it):

In order to create this, I had to remove the "Ped" symbol from the second line, but I also had to manually adjust the length of the first line - there is no way to anchor the line end to the first of note the measure. My example is actually anchored to the barline (or so it seems to me) and manually adjusted. This is wrong. Pedal lines should be able to anchor to any note *or* to a barline (although see below about anchoring to a barline); the barline shouldn't take the place of the first note.

If I try to position the carat under the second note, here is how it looks with no manual adjustment (after removing the Ped symbol):

This takes only a slight amount of manual adjustment, but again, it shouldn't be necessary.

BTW, getting the end of the second line positioned where you see it in the above examples also took manual adjustment. By default, the line wants to extend all the way to the barline, but in my experience, this isn't common - it's more common to terminate the pedal line right after the last note. Still, since it's "logically" attached to the barline, it doesn't bother me quite so much to need to adjust this manually. Of course, you could simply anchor the end of the line to that last note, but I believe this would cut off the playback before that note rather than after.

So really, there are a host of problems here:

1) we're potentially missing one palette line (one of the first two in my example)
2) Ped symbol doesn't belong on most of the palette lines
3) it should be possible to anchor end of line to first note of measure, not just barline
4) angled lines anchored to other notes in measure should align

It has been suggested that starting a line with an angled hook might be used to indicate a gradual press of the pedal (and I guess similarly for ending a line on an angled hook). But I'm a pianist and I don't think I've ever seen it, nor does Wikipedia or Gould mention this. EDIT: actually, see Gould p. 334. She shows a more gradual diagonal line, not a fixed hook. She also shows all pedal markings beginning with the "Ped" symbol, but even a breif examination of the literature shows this isn't so common any more (it was a century ago, I'd agree).

I would say that if the angle hook option remains available as an option buried in Line Properties, but the carat itself were what was included in the palette - either always starting or always ending a line, I guess - that should be fine. Of course, that doesn't really solve the problem in itself - we still need to make sure things align, that it is possible to get a pedal line to end at the first note of a measure, etc.

Palette looks good (you need to run with "-F" to reset your palette), alignment seems to work well. Some anomalies in extending the pedal marking, also a crash if I try adding the removing text, but I'll file those separately.