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A twip (abbreviating "twentieth of a point", "twentieth of an inch point", [1] or "twentieth of an Imperial point" [ citation needed]) is a typographical measurement, defined as 1⁄20 of a typographical point. One twip is 1⁄1440 inch, or 17.64 μm. [2]
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 1⁄1440 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 [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 1⁄20 of a logical pixel, [6] which is 3⁄4 of an actual twip. [7]