A twip (abbreviating "twentieth of a point" or "twentieth of an inch point") is a
typographical
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spac ...
measurement, defined as of a
typographical point. One twip is inch, or 17.64 μm.
In computing
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 of an inch (approximately 17.64 μm).
A
pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...
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 Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to:
* Visual Basic (.NET), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET
* Visual Basic (classic), the original Visual Basic suppo ...
(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
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...
bitmap images for automatic scaling from bitmap pixels to device pixels. They are also used in
Rich Text Format
)
As an example, the following RTF code
would be rendered as follows:
This is some bold text.
Character encoding
A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. ...
from Microsoft for platform-independent exchange and they are the base length unit in
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...
and its
fork
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...
LibreOffice
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
.
Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Barry Allen
** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...
internally specifies most sizes in units it calls twips, but which are really of a logical pixel, which is of an actual twip.
Flash logical pixels are the same as HTML logical pixels, of which there are 96 to an inch, rather than 72
/ref>
See also
*Himetric
Himetric is a resolution-independent unit of length. Its role is similar to the twip, but it is one hundredth of a millimetre. It is mainly used in Object Linking and Embedding and derived technologies such as ActiveX, Active Template Library and ...
References
*
* MSDN Library &mdash
com.ms.wfc.ui.CoordinateSystem.TWIP
* Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing &mdash
twip
* Foundation, ActionScript 3.0 Animation, Making Things Move! by Keith Peters (pbk)
Typography
Units of length
{{Typ-stub