A twip (abbreviating "twentieth of a point" or "twentieth of an inch point"[1]) is a typographical measurement, defined as 1⁄20 of a typographical point. One twip is 1⁄1440inch, or 17.64μm.[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 17.64μm).
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 forkLibreOffice.
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]
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