Harfsaz
Open-source desktop publishing for Urdu, Arabic, Persian
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Harfsaz is the free, open-source InPage alternative: Urdu, Arabic and Persian desktop publishing with true Nastaliq shaping, kashida justification, vector PDF export, InPage and PDF import, handwriting OCR and an AI writing assistant. macOS, Windows, Linux and the web.
PH · launched Sep 22, 2026 · 2 upvotes (top 26%) · 3 views
Niche: desktop publishing software · 24 launches, 4 in the last 7 days ▼ -60% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Content generation
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
- Design Tools
- Open Source
- Writing
- GitHub
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 24 launches in desktop publishing software →
Could you build this?
No Implementing accurate Nastaliq script layout, font shaping via HarfBuzz, kashida justification on non-horizontal baselines, and reverse-engineering proprietary binary legacy InPage (.inp) formats requires deep domain expertise in complex-script typography and systems-level desktop publishing engines.
What it would actually take: Building Harfsaz requires a native or WebAssembly C++ engine integrating HarfBuzz and FreeType for complex bi-directional text shaping, specifically calibrated for Nastaliq's cascading sloping baselines. It demands custom layout and pagination algorithms supporting kashida elongations without breaking Arabic ligatures, a PDF generation pipeline writing raw vector glyph curves, and a custom binary deserializer written by reverse-engineering InPage's undocumented proprietary file format.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 93 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #21 of 94 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 247 days after the earliest competitor.
- Free Adawat — أدوات مجانية · ph · 2026-10-24 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Mujaz · ph · 2026-09-29 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- lovelypdf.tech · ph · 2026-10-24 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- CalligArab · ph · 2026-10-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- TextSpace · github · 2026-09-27 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- ZANCTA · ph · 2026-10-13 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Open HWP files and save as PDF · ph · 2026-10-20 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Moji · ph · 2026-09-11 · 109 upvotes · similarity 0.37
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