Yes.
No, they do not have to be lines, or rather they shouldn’t be lines.
Well, it’s three, but yes, I imagined measuring internally by 3 chords.
So, basically, you find the total number of chord units, use Daniel’s Kangaroo method to spread these chords evenly across the curve. Center points on the chords for circles. Cull circles that are gaps. Somehow merge three circles into a deformed oblong… This is also just an appoximation then though as centerpoint(s) of the figures do not lie on the curve anymore. This doesn’t work.
@laurent_delrieu 's Nautilus has a String of Pearls component, but it doesn’t scale the pearls to the length of the curve:
Mainly, it bothered me that the circles were being deformed to not-circles via Flow