How does this work?

Question

In applications like Adobe Illustrator, they have a way to simplify a path. I'm not sure how this works exactly. Given a path with points which have 2 bezier handles each (for cubic bezier), how could I go about simplifying the path?

Thanks

Answer 1

Look at Douglas–Peucker it is an algorithm for reducing the number of points in a curve that is approximated by a series of points. It is frequently used in GIS solutions.