Pedal markings on Grand Staff
Not trying to rehash the comments in the Forum over the past years about why pedal markings cannot appear below the grand staff (below the bass staff), but just some general observations. Pedal markings are lines. All lines (except slurs) are tied to the staff and notes on that staff used to define the length of the line (dynamics, voltas, octave up, etc.) These are required because the playback needs to know a specific measure and beat on which to start/stop the line's effect. Also explains why you can't have these start and stop between staves. I would argue that some lines should be able to be cross staffed if the affect is for the part, because you are still defining a measure/beat location. Again, slurs are free from graphical additions, not tied to the staves. But consider the following.. all lines are added with common code no doubt for lines of any type. But how difficult would it be to add code that says however if the line is a pedal line and attached to the bass staff, the location is okay as is. However if the line is attached to the treble staff then why not just add an offset to the location automatically and make adjustments for automatic placement to allow it to appear below the bass staff. If automatic placement remains on, then lowering it will just increase the separation between staves as the line will not be allowed to move into or below the bass staff. Just some thinking about the issue. No trying to add to the various "bug" or issue reports on the subject so I have added to general discussion area. Do not know the coding so this could be "impossible" to do and am not completely up to speed as to what other impediments may exist to this approach.
Comments
What you say makes sense, it's definitely doable, as are other potential solutions to this problem. It's really just a matter of someone taking the time to completely think through from a design perspective how this will look to the user, and then someone implementing that design.
Personally, I would think not in terms of adding offsets, but simply displaying above or below the instrument as a whole rather than the current staff. But another approach is to add to the bottom but pay attention to both staves in how we find anchor points when extending the line. i think there is/was a pending pull request implementing one or the other of these approaches, but it's probably out of date by now.
In reply to What you say makes sense, it… by Marc Sabatella
The only reason to use notes in the upper staff is if there is no corresponding pair of notes in the bass staff. Say the base is entirely a single note for the entire measure duration so if the pedal is applied to less than the full measure you need to use the treble staff notes.
In reply to The only reason to use notes… by msokol
Right. It's probably more useful if you have a long rest at the end of the bass measure. If you want it applied to the whole measure, nothing would change with your proposal otherwise stopping for notes and rests on any staff of the piano would make sense so the pedal would have all the flexibility one would need outside of some very strange cases.