I think that what you really want is the distance of a point to a segment, and not the distance to a line. Because a line is infinite, and the shortest distance of a point to a line might fall outside your segment.

In the case below, the distance of the point C to the line AB is CP. But P is outside of your segment, and what you really want is CA and not CP.

                 /
                x (B)
               /
              /
             /
 x (C)      x (A)
   `.      /
      `.  /
        `x
        / (P)
       /
      /

[download]

So, you must find the coordinate of P (the distance to the line) then check if P is outside of your segment. If it's outside, then you compute CA and CB and take the shortest.

In reply to Re: Algorithm: point with N distance of a line between two other points by choocroot
in thread Algorithm: point with N distance of a line between two other points by japhy

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