I've had an interest in polyline simplification for the last couple of weeks, and I eventually stumbled upon the Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm and a JavaScrip

I've had an interest in polyline simplification for the last couple of weeks, and I eventually stumbled upon the Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm and a JavaScript [1] and Python [2] implementation of it. However, one thing it doesn't do (and Visvalingam’s algorithm doesn't either) is remove loops. In many cases you wouldn't want that, but sometimes you just want to draw a line that looks right, and being able to remove redundant parts of the polyline would be very helpful. For example, in the case where you have a GPS track of a run where you run to a nearby oval, do ten laps, and then run home, and you want the simplest polyline that looks right. 1: https://github.com/mourner/simplify-js https://github.com/mourner/simplify-js 2: https://github.com/omarestrella/simplify.py/ https://github.com/omarestrella/simplify.py/