How can I measure travel distance on electronic maps?

[CyrusStonecypher]

You need python installed, and gimp installed with python support to use python plugins. It isn't simple in windows, but I can point you in the right direction if desired.

regarding a script, Fencepost has a path animation script suite (scripts here, tutorial here) that includes a "Path Details" function (right click on a path and select Path Details that will give you the length in pixels, the number of points and the closed status.

-Rob A>

I took another look at Gimp's Python requirements and found that I was missing the pyGtk. Even with that corrected (Python-fu now shows up in the filters list) the first "measure active path" .py I downloaded didn't work. I moved on to the script you suggested and it does work. I have to determine the scale of distance units per pixel and perform some calculations, but it's still better than guessing.

We talked before about measuring the amount of area within a map and we came up with a cool method which was really fast . . . . Multiply by pixels per m scale and thats real length on map.

This works too. I used a 1 pixel wide brush and then I just took the number of black pixels and multiplied by pixels per mile (we still love our imperial units here in the U.S.).

Is there any need to use a brush wider than 1 pixel when determining length?