lyrics not quite lining up

[Russ Ross]

I'm using Lilypond 2.0.1 and having trouble getting lyrics to line
up properly.  They are finding the right notes, but they tend to be
a bit off to the left or right.  They end up overlapping bar lines
and melisma lines and they are a bit hard to follow in some places.
Is this a setup error of some kind?  I'm using default options
everywhere on a Mandrake 9.2 setup.  It's pretty consistent, so
doing manual overrides seems overkill (it would have to happen on
every lyric).

Two other lyrics questions:

1. I have some syllables that span multiple measures and even
multiple lines.  With a melisma it works fine, but with a "--" it
only puts one dash in (as opposed to a dashed line which would seem
to be better).  When the syllable spans an entire line, lilypond
doesn't put anything on that line (not even a single dash) and
pulls the next staff up as though there were no lyrics there.  Is
there a way to fix this?

2. When I have a melisma that ends at a rest, I get a warning.  I
can get around it by putting an empty lyric ("") on the rest but
then I get another warning about having a lyric with no note.  I can
also cut the melisma a bit short and have an empty lyric on the
last part of the note, but this seems a bit clumsy.  Is there a
better way of doing this?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Russ