while on the topic of simplification: the rotate/grow behavior is mostly due to the fact that you set the treshhold of simplification according to the size of the object. if the treshhold is fixed, the shape won't grow. the rotation is extremely odd, i have no explanation for that.
I think it's intuitively correct for the threshold to depend on the size of objects; if this causes rotation&growth, I think we can live with that, because this only affects a closed shape and only after it's been simplified to the extreme already.
also, you set a default treshhold of 0.02, which is very small. the meaning of the treshhold is sort of the max deviation between original and approximated. you need at least 1.0 to make simplification useful.
It's not 0.02, it's 0.02 multiplied by the size of the object. While this value is small, it still does some simplification for some shapes, and it's set intentionally low because it's supposed to be accelerated by repeating the command fast (press and hold Ctrl+L). I found that when acceleration ups the value to 0.1 or more, this cracks almost any shape, and with 0.2 or more, the shape degrades to a one- or two-node path quickly.
anyway, i just understood why the splotchs were appearing in the offsets, but don't know how to solve that. probably going to need a big rewrite of its code...
Do you mean only splotches (bug 866838) or general distortions (877019), or are they the same problem?
Anyway, consider that the relative size of the distortions lessens when applied to a larger object. So a workaround I use when I need to offset a small object is this: scale the object up 10x, do the offset, scale it back. This suggests that the severity of the problem can be reduced if you make the algorithm somehow use a finer scale so it would "think" that the object is larger than it is, and then scale the result back to original size. Do you think it's feasible? While not eliminating distortions completely, this could reduce them so that the command will be usable in all scales, and it does not require a major rewrite (I think).
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