Understood @Dave_Olverson . As I said, I didn’t expect Gantt to solve your issue, but it could be more useful in certain cases. And I guess that sorting the Timeline by Start date won’t work for you either, since you don’t want waterfalls, and instead prefer your tasks in-line.
For what it’s worth, I agree that this 'design flaw 'should get resolved. The arrow on the left of the tasks should clearly not be treated as a ‘day’ that creates a gap and pushes things around. I had proposed the same as you, once this had launched back in Jan '23, here. 