Tight linear envelopes for splines

Summary. A sharp bound on the distance between a spline and its B-spline control polygon is derived. The bound yields a piecewise linear envelope enclosing spline and polygon. This envelope is particularly simple for uniform splines and splines in Bernstein-Bézier form and shrinks by a factor of 4 for each uniform subdivision step. The envelope can be easily and efficiently implemented due to its explicit and constructive nature.