An algorithm for inflating/deflating (offsetting, buffering) polygons

Question

How would I "inflate" a polygon? That is, I want to do something similar to this:

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Answer 1

One further option is to use boost::polygon - the documentation is somewhat lacking, but you should find that the methods resize and bloat, and also the overloaded += operator, which actually implement buffering. So for example increasing the size of a polygon (or a set of polygons) by some value can be as simple as:

poly += 2; // buffer polygon by 2