Short pedal travels tellsme that your cable maybe need some adjustment.
And smooth pedal tells me that clutch plate and bearing are good.
But maybe because of short cable you are not separating enought clutch to have smoot gearchange.
You sad that when standing still and moving vertical lever (one from gerbox) you have point where it gets little harder and then after that point it is easy again.
That point could be moment when gears are getting into connection, which i would say is normal. But that hard point should not be so hard that you must use force but just to feel differance.
If you need to use bigger force than something is hapening inside gearbox
But opening gearbox would left for last.
I would go with adjusting clutch cable. It is not to hard job and can make differance while driving.
And cleaning horisontal lever and bushes.
It can make big differance.
After that i would drive it for a while just to be shure if did make any differance.
Hope this two things will do the job and you won't go gearbox opening path.