A twip (abbreviating "twentieth of a point" or "twentieth of an inch point"[1]) is a typographical measurement, defined as 120 of a typographical point. One twip is 11440 inch, or 17.64 μm.[2]

twip
Unit systemTypographic units
Unit ofLength
Conversions
1 twip in ...... is equal to ...
   Typographic units   1/20 points
   Imperial/US units   1/1440 in
   Metric (SI) units   17.64 μm

In computing

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Twips are screen-independent units to ensure that the proportion of screen elements are the same on all display systems. A twip is defined as being 11440 of an inch (approximately 17.64 μm).

A pixel is a screen-dependent unit, standing for 'picture element'. A pixel is a dot that represents the smallest graphical measurement on a screen. Twips are the default unit of measurement in Visual Basic (version 6 and earlier, prior to VB.NET). Converting between twips and screen pixels is achieved using the TwipsPerPixelX and TwipsPerPixelY properties[3] or the ScaleX and ScaleY methods.[4]

Twips can be used with Symbian OS bitmap images for automatic scaling from bitmap pixels to device pixels.[5] They are also used in Rich Text Format from Microsoft for platform-independent exchange and they are the base length unit in OpenOffice.org and its fork LibreOffice.

Flash internally specifies most sizes in units it calls twips, but which are really 120 of a logical pixel,[6] which is 34 of an actual twip.[7]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing: http://foldoc.org/twip
  2. ^ "Word 2007: Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification, version 1.9.1". Microsoft Corporation. 19 March 2008. p. 8. Retrieved 12 March 2017.
  3. ^ "TwipsPerPixelX, TwipsPerPixelY Properties". docs.microsoft.com. 23 August 2006.
  4. ^ "ScaleX, ScaleY Methods". docs.microsoft.com. 23 August 2006.
  5. ^ Dueder, Janelle (December 20, 2020). "Blitting and bitmaps - Symbian OS C++". 25 Years of Programming.
  6. ^ "SWF FILE FORMAT SPECIFICATION" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-11-20.
  7. ^ Flash logical pixels are the same as HTML logical pixels, of which there are 96 to an inch, rather than 72