Robert,
But I don't really see a reason in the data format for any kind of minimal distance (apart from the obvious minimum of 1 map unit (360/2**24 degrees)).
Does anything actually break if you disregard close nodes? Do these problems remain if RouteArc.convertMeters returns at least 1?
I haven't seen breakage.
By the way, what I wrote earlier regarding boundary nodes and junctions is probably wrong -- the problems I based that guess on are very likely to have been caused by the unsorted boundary nodes.
OK - I'm going to remove the near node removing code - wait till someone has a problem before doing any more there. I'm tempted to commit this stuff to trunk and let people try it out. If it screws anything, we can revert it quickly. What do you think? Cheers, Mark