How to calculate control points for cubic curve, which approximates an elliptic arc?

Question

Almost all vector graphics applications (like Corel) approximate elliptic arcs with several cubic Bezier curves. I need to add similar functionality to my application. So my question is: how to calculate control points of that Bezier curve?

Answer 1

There are lots of pages explaining how to do this. This paper by Don Lancaster, for example, gives control parameters for divisions of an ellipse into between 2 and 8 cubic splines, with a detailed analysis of the 4-spline case.