InPage is a
page layoutPage layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page.- History and development :...
software for languages such as
UrduUrdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
,
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
,
PashtoPashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...
and
ArabicArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
under
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
which was first developed in 1994. It is primarily used for creating pages in the language of Urdu, using the Nasta`līq (نستعلبق) ('hanging' calligraphic) style of Arabic script. As a
de facto standard Urdu publishing tool, InPage is widely used on PCs where the user wishes to create their documents in Urdu, using the authentic style of Nastaliq with a vast ligature library (more than 20,000), while keeping the display of characters on screen
WYSIWYGWYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
(What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get). Overall, this makes the on-screen and printed results more 'faithful' to hand-written calligraphy than all or most other Urdu software on the market. This is achieved while keeping the operation easy, akin to that of earlier versions of standard English
Desktop PublishingDesktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
packages such as
QuarkXPressQuarkXPress is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc...
and
Adobe InDesignAdobe InDesign is a software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. In conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite InDesign can publish content suitable for tablet devices...
.
Before being used within InPage, the Noori style of Nastaliq, which was first created as a digital typeface (font) in 1981 through the collaboration of Mirza Ahmad Jamil TI (as calligrapher) and
Monotype ImagingMonotype Imaging Holdings is a Delaware corporation based in Woburn, Massachusetts and specializing in typesetting and typeface design as well as text and imaging solutions for use with consumer electronics devices. Monotype Imaging Holdings is the owner of Monotype Imaging Inc., Linotype,...
(formerly Monotype Corp.), suffered from two problems in the 1990s: a) its non-availability on standard platforms such as Windows or Mac, and b) the non-WYSIWYG nature of text entry, whereby the document had to be created by commands in Monotype's proprietary
page description languageA page description language is a language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap. An overlapping term is printer control language, but it should not be confused as referring solely to Hewlett-Packard's PCL...
.
In 1994, an Indian software development team - Concept Software Pvt Ltd, led by Rarendra Singh & Vijay Gupta, with the collaboration of a UK company called Multilingual Solutions led by Kamran Rouhi, developed InPage Urdu for Pakistan's newspaper industry, who up until that time had been using large teams of calligraphers to hand-write last minute corrections to text created under Monotype's proprietary system. The Noori Nastaliq typeface was licensed for InPage from Monotype & augmented for use as the main Urdu font in this software, along with 40 other non-Nastaliq fonts which were created by Syed Manzar Hasan from Axis Softmedia Pvt Ltd.
InPage is reported to be in use on millions of PCs in Pakistan & India (mainly illegal pirated version). It has also been widely marketed & sold legally in the UK and India since 1994, and is utilized in the majority of UK schools & local authorities where Urdu is a main language of pupils & constituents.
InPage launched its latest Version 3 at ITCN exhibition Asia in Karachi, Pakistan, held between 11–13 August 2008. It is now Unicode based, supports more Languages, and Faiz Lahori Nastaliq font with Kasheeda has been added to it along with compatibility with OpenType Unicode fonts. In addition to Arabic, Saraiki, Urdu, Persian & Pashto, other languages of the region, such as Sindhi and Hazaragi can be handled in InPage.