InPage came out in 1994 and it's still what most Urdu newspapers and publishers run on. Windows only, paid, closed. If you're on a Mac, or you just want to lay out a page of Nastaliq without fighting the software, you're stuck. I got tired of that, so I built Harfsaz. It does real Nastaliq and Naskh shaping, kashida justification, and vector PDF export where the text stays searchable and editable. It imports your existing .inp and PDF files, so you're not starting from zero. There's handwriting OCR for scanned pages and an AI assistant for writing, proofreading and translation. macOS, Windows, Linux and the browser. It's AGPL-3.0 on GitHub, free forever, with a commercial licence if you need one. If you typeset in Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Pashto or Sindhi, I'd really like to hear where it breaks for you. That's the feedback I need most.

Harfsaz

Open-source desktop publishing for Urdu, Arabic, Persian

Open-source desktop publishing for Urdu, Arabic, Persian