sync~: "offset" message no effect, "start" message inconsistent - possible bug?

I'm not getting some aspects of the sync~ object. Would be thankful if someone could shed some light on this.
It says in the reference of the sync~ object:

"The word 'offset', followed by a floating point number in the range 0.-1.0, adjusts the "phase" of the current output ramp."

However, I couldn't find a way that this message has any effect on the output ramp at all.
For instance, producing a very slow ramp (bpm 1), and sending "offset" messages by dragging a number box connected to the message "offset $1" (connected to sync~'s inlet), should have an effect on the output ramp, no?

The behaviour is the same in Max6 and Max5, thus I believe I'm not getting what this message means.

Likewise, it says in the reference:
"The word 'start' causes the current output ramp to halt, and resets the ramp to 0." -> Again, I can't reproduce this behaviour here. In Max6, the message 'start' will re-trigger a given ramp, but only once while DSP is running, whereas in Max5 it will retrigger multiple times (as described in the reference), which leads me to think this could be a bug.

This is on Max6.1.7 (both 32 and 64Bit), Max5.1.9, MacOS 10.9.2

Cheers,
Marlon