It would be very cool to have this under the right click and then somewhere in Filters list where you could affect more than one Path at once

Well what it does is create an inside or outside selection along with the original correct?Then you are able to fill it or stroke it?

If you stroke it will it stroke two lines (one on each side of the selection value you enter)?

<Vectors>/Parallel path - i suppose would be appropriate as you would be working with Paths at the time.

Am i correct in assuming what the script does?

A picture is worth a thousands words...

Very cool, the picture explains it perfectly, although I am not sure, you mean the gray was original? And assuming from the fact I see the Open path picture there, is the script done?

I look forward to seeing your code (he said in understated tones). Are you implementing Thomas Hein's "Flattening of Cubic Bézier Offset Curves"?

No, I'm using a brute force approach, iterating the strokes, finding the coordinates of the point at requested distance on the perpendicular, and so generating a huge number of lineto() that Gimp seems to handle very well (my code for this is a derivative of my Slinky plugin, for which I doubt there is a nice mathematical solution).

For the simple case we have here, I thought there could be a more subtle solution and your pointer is good news. However the text of the article on various sites is protected by a 30$+ fee and since I'm not expecting any financial compensation on the script I won't bother.

The paper in question, if anyone is interested, below:

Cool. Now grabbing the aspirin...

Looks exactly how i pictured it.
I shall now do double duty rain dancing -

It's basically finished, just needs a bit more testing, and then creation of a SourceForge project. This could happen tonight. On the other hand, on weekdays, available time for pythonic Gimp isn't very weather-dependent (in fact if it rains my motorcycle commuting takes longer). It would be more appropriate to pray Vishnu, Shiva and other gods for painless integration of the code provided by my offshore correspondents, so I can come home early.

(fortunately you have lost your powers, it's very sunny this morning).

Some days a guy just can't get a break...

I do have a version of my avatar in case of nasty bugs:

I took the opportunity to set up a new SF project to gather my various scripts, so you're all welcome to http://gimp-path-tools.sf.net/

ribbon-path-0.0.py is somewhere there, with its slinky brother (no updates to that one yet).

Unlike its predecessor, this one creates the menu entry in the right click menu in the Paths dialog (it won't work without a path anyway, and doesn't require any drawable). For the rest I'll let you figure out how it works

Have fun.

Source forge looks good man
Testing it out now

Awesomeness! Thank you, ofnuts!

I couldn't get mine to work... it is in the Same Place as Slinky and saved as a Python file... help

Right click in Path dialog on a Path, Willy. Same place you "stroke a path"

Found your first Problem mate
Although I like the effect it gave

Might not be a problem, but sorta expected behavior. Can you post an XCF with the original path, as well as the parms you used?

Had to remake, Parms
5
Right

Enjoy