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 just evaluate the orthogonal versor and multiply by N/2

vx = x2-x1
vy = y2-y1
len = sqrt( vx*vx + vy*vy )
ux = -vy/len
uy = vx/len

x3 = x1 + N/2 * ux
Y3 = y1 + N/2 * uy

x4 = x1 - N/2 * ux
Y4 = y1 - N/2 * uy