How do you find a point at a given perpendicular distance from a line?

Question

I have a line that I draw in a window and I let the user drag it around. So, my line is defined by two points: (x1,y1) and (x2,y2). But now I would like to draw \"caps\" at

Answer 1

You need to compute a unit vector that's perpendicular to the line segment. Avoid computing the slope because that can lead to divide by zero errors.

dx = x1-x2
dy = y1-y2
dist = sqrt(dx*dx + dy*dy)
dx /= dist
dy /= dist
x3 = x1 + (N/2)*dy
y3 = y1 - (N/2)*dx
x4 = x1 - (N/2)*dy
y4 = y1 + (N/2)*dx