Twip

A twip (abbreviating "twentieth of a point" or "twentieth of an inch point") is a typographical measurement, defined as

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 being1⁄1440 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 or the ScaleX and ScaleY methods.

Twips can be used with Symbian OS bitmap images for automatic scaling from bitmap pixels to device pixels. 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 really1⁄20 of a logical pixel, which is3⁄4 of an actual twip.

• Himetric

• Sparke, Gerard; Etherington, Stephen (2000). Visual Basic Programmers' Workbook. Pearson Education Australia. ISBN 978-1-74009-445-0.
• MSDN Library — com.ms.wfc.ui.CoordinateSystem.TWIP
• Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing — twip
• Foundation, ActionScript 3.0 Animation, Making Things Move! by Keith PetersISBN 978-1-59059-791-0 (pbk)
• Converting between twips and pixels - Ruby code