twip

unit, graphics (TWentIeth of a Point) 1/20 of a Postscriptpoint, or 1/1440th of an inch. There are thus 1440 twips to

an inch or about 567 twips to a centimeter.

Twips are used in Microsoft formats and products, notably

Rich Text Format, Visual BASIC, Visual C++, and printerdrivers; and in IBM AFP products.

Twips were devised in the olden days to describe the sizes of

characters produced by dot matrix printers that were

constrained to multiples of either 12 or 10 dots per inch.

[Is it definitely relative to a _Postscript_ point, as opposed

to one of the other definitions of point?]

(2002-03-11)