Dynamic questions

[Edward Sanford Sutton, III]

  http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.1/input/regression/out-www/lily-1175767955.ly 
mentions that something like /ff/> will appear on the same horizontal level. 
Should other markings, such as cresc, do it too? My guess is that

\set crescendoText = \markup { \italic "cresc. poco" }
a'2\< a a a\!\mf

from the dynamics section of the manual works, but that something like

a\f\cresc a a\!\ff

would not follow that the same way.
  Should a consistency between the space between the crescendoSpanner being 
adjacent to the preceding crescendoTextand and the space between 
crescendoSpanner and where it ends (particularly, for example, when ending 
next to another dynamic). Sometimes it seems to work like

cresc.- - - f

and othertimes its like

cresc.- - -f

depending on spacing. In the manual, there is an example even showing the last 
dash shrunk down; it almost seems to be a dot.
  If the current working is preferred, or others are not implemented for some 
reason, that works for me too; I didn't find any mailings I could notice to 
be relevant, and the manual doesn't mention a word one way or the other which 
lead me to assume that it either works as desired or hadn't been looked at 
like this yet.