[Tilecache] metabuffer results in conflicting behavior for point & line labels..

[louvy.joseph at gmail.com]

I am using tilecache metaSize of 3,3 and I have both lines & points in 
my geoserver-1.5.3 based wms server.

When I have metaBuffer=0, some of my text labels for the points get 
dropped. I am thinking that these points happen to be at edges of meta 
tiles and there is not enough space to render the label and so the 
geoserver drops them.

Now if I start increasing the metaBuffer to 10, 20 or 30 pixels, now 
slowly more of my points start showing up. But my line names are getting 
chopped now. I tried various metaBuffer options but I am not able to 
correct the problem of line names getting chopped.

 From geoserver  point of view, the problem is happening because the 
point labels have precise definition of where they should be and the 
bigger metaBuffer helps them. But the line labels are not precisely 
positioned based on any geographic location constraints. So one meta 
tile may decide to put a part of line label into its metabuffer space 
but the next adjoining metatile never bothered about this label. If only 
the two adjoining meta tiles included the line label at the exact same 
geographic point, it wouldn't have chopped the line labels so badly.

Does anybody have any ideas? Am I doing something wrong? Is this tunable 
in tilecache or geoserver SLD or where else?

Thanks in advance..
Louvy Joseph