As far as I know, I'm the first to propose a solution that includes the equal-area constraint as part of the solution, though it is mentioned in the Penner paper as part of the search that led to the saddle point ODF solutions.
The technique should definitely work for path merging, that's a primary motivation. I'm not sure I understand your other questions. It'll probably be clearer when I release some code that implements this algorithm, though I'm not making any promises when that might be.
The technique should definitely work for path merging, that's a primary motivation. I'm not sure I understand your other questions. It'll probably be clearer when I release some code that implements this algorithm, though I'm not making any promises when that might be.