Why InPage still rules Urdu publishing
Walk into any Urdu newspaper, digest or book publisher in Pakistan and you will find InPage on the production machines. Since the 1990s this Pakistani desktop-publishing package has been the tool for Nastaliq composition, for one simple reason: it laid out hanging Nastaliq text properly a decade before web browsers could.
That dominance created a parallel universe of "InPage fonts" — typefaces you install on Windows so InPage can use them, often alongside the fonts bundled with the software itself.
The classic font stack
Most InPage installations rotate around a handful of Nastaliq faces:
1. Jameel Noori Nastaleeq — the Urdu national typeface. If a document is going to print in Pakistan, chances are it is set in Jameel Noori. Heavy file, beautiful hanging baselines, mature ligatures. 2. InPage Nastaliq — the workhorse bundled face; lighter and faster to compose than Jameel Noori. 3. Noori Nastaliq (Attari) — the Attari Noori cut used across religious and literary publishing. 4. Jameel Noori Kasheeda — the elongated (kasheeda) companion face for headlines and titles.
All four are hosted here with live previews — type your own text in each before you decide which one your document actually needs.
Installing your own fonts into InPage
InPage uses standard TrueType (.ttf) fonts, installed at the Windows level, not inside the application:
1. Download the .ttf (from a font's page here — InPage Nastaliq for example). 2. Right-click the file → Install (or copy it into C:\Windows\Fonts ). 3. Restart InPage — the font appears in its font list.
Two practical warnings:
• Licenses travel with the file. "Free to install" is not the same as "free to publish". Check each font's license page before commercial print runs — every font here carries its license on its detail page precisely so you do not have to guess. • Keep the exact file version. InPage documents reference fonts by name; opening a layout on a machine with a different version of the same family can reflow every line of Nastaliq. Archive the .ttf next to the document.
InPage and Unicode: the honest state of affairs
Classic InPage editions stored text in legacy 8-bit encodings; newer versions support Unicode export, but the industry's muscle memory (and its font collections) still live partly in the legacy world. In practice:
• Sharing text out (email, web, databases): export as Unicode text, then use a Unicode-native Nastaliq such as Noto Nastaliq Urdu on the receiving side. • Designing for both worlds : compose print in Jameel Noori, but set the web version of the same content in Noto Nastaliq Urdu — it is engineered for exactly this job (it is what this site's own previews use). • Checking coverage before you commit : our language coverage benchmark tests every hosted font, letter by letter, for the characters Urdu requires.
The web has (mostly) caught up
Ten years ago, "real Nastaliq" meant InPage, full stop. Today browsers render OpenType shaping correctly, and faces like Noto Nastaliq Urdu and Gulzar deliver genuine hanging Nastaliq on the web. InPage remains king for long-form print composition — the fallback-free way to typeset a 300-page book — but for everything from social graphics to news sites, the web route is now production-ready.
Quick decision table
Job Use --- --- Book / newspaper print InPage + Jameel Noori Nastaleeq Fast internal documents InPage + InPage Nastaliq Website / app text Noto Nastaliq Urdu Bilingual (Urdu + English) sites Gulzar or Noto Nastaliq Urdu for Urdu, with a Latin companion Logos & titles Any Nastaliq, drawn as outlines in your vector editor
Whatever you choose: test the actual text, at the actual size, on the actual medium. Nastaliq that sings at 14pt on paper can collapse at 16px on a phone. Every font page here gives you a live preview box for exactly that.