IranNastaliq

According to Behrouz Minaei, the council's technical deputy, no existing software could reliably render Nastaliq's complex, height-varying letterforms on a standard computer.^[1][3][4]

Dadevarzan-e Hamoon (شرکت داده‌ورزان هامون), the company that also produces the Parwin word processor, engineered the font in consultation with calligraphy experts to manage Nastaliq's varying baseline heights, and released Version 1 as freeware through the council's portal in November 2007.^[1][2][3] It was downloaded roughly 400,000 times over the following years.^[5][4]

Version 1 lacked the ability to elongate letters (kashida) and had some incompatibilities with Unicode rendering.^[6][4] The council addressed these shortcomings with Version 2, released in May 2012 after formal vetting and approval from Persian calligrapher Amir-Ahmad Falsafi.^[5][4][7] No new version was documented in the available sources for nearly a decade: the council was dissolved and Dadevarzan-e Hamoon ceased operating.^[3] This update represented a major technical refinement of the font, focusing on typography balance, spatial accuracy, and support for modern software environments.^[8]

According to the font's production team, Hossein Zahedi and Hossein Ghasemi-rad (production manager of the related Parwin word-processing software) revived the project independently in the Iranian calendar year 1400 (which began in March 2021). The producers state that, nearly ten years after the release of Version 2, they spent several months reviewing and redesigning the typeface before releasing Version 3 in Bahman 1400 (roughly January–February 2022). The new edition was commercially licensed and distributed through IranNastaliq.ir and ParwinFont. According to the producers, the redesign introduced corrections based on principles of calligraphy and writing, including changes to the geometric forms of letters, spacing between them, and the placement of dots and diacritics. They also state that the font was adapted for compatibility with newer versions of text-editing and graphics software, including Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.^[3][9][10] A GitHub repository distributing the older versions, uploaded in 2022, describes them as licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL-1.1) and attributes the release to the Information Technology Organization of Iran (ITO); this attribution has not been independently confirmed.^[11] Zahedi has continued to release updates to Version 3, including Version 3.09, published in July 2024 (Tir 1403 in the Iranian calendar) and technically identified in the font metadata as Ver. 3.09 [IranNastaliq.ir] 20240721.^[12]

Nastaliq script cascades diagonally from top right to bottom left, unlike horizontal scripts such as Latin or Arabic Naskh, and its letterforms change shape depending on context.^[2][13] Before OpenType support existed, typesetting Nastaliq relied on specialized software such as Kelk.^[2] Complex Nastaliq layouts can still produce rendering errors, such as broken or misaligned glyph sequences—which occur when a font's OpenType instructions do not fully account for a given letter combination. HarfBuzz's source code notes that IranNastaliq relies heavily on the Contextual Swash (cswh) feature to repair such sequences; the engine nonetheless leaves cswh disabled by default, following Windows 8's own default, so the fix does not run automatically when the font is shaped with HarfBuzz.^[14]

Because IranNastaliq is a Unicode-compliant OpenType font, it works directly in standard text editors such as Microsoft Word and graphic design applications such as Photoshop and CorelDRAW, without requiring dedicated Nastaliq typesetting software.^[15][2] It also appears in academic typesetting: the LaTeX package XePersian uses it as the worked example in its documentation for defining a custom Nastaliq font with the \defpersianfont command.^[16][17]

IranNastaliq was designed around the Nastaliq conventions favored in Iran, a regional style distinct from the Nastaliq traditions used for Urdu typesetting; Nastaliq has a prominent place in Iranian calligraphic tradition, whereas in Pakistan and parts of India it is used extensively for Urdu specifically.^[2][13]

Text justification and Kashida

As in other Arabic-script typefaces, IranNastaliq justifies text by elongating certain letters (Kashida) rather than by expanding the spaces between words.^[18] Developers of the HarfBuzz text-shaping engine have noted that Version 1 of the font could produce broken kashida elongations in some letter combinations; a 2018 HarfBuzz bug report found Version 2 handled kashida insertion better, though a contributor still considered the font unsafe to assume it supported automatic kashida placement.^[6]

To expand the availability of IranNastaliq across web, desktop, and mobile platforms, developer Mohammad Saleh Souzanchi published a modified web-optimized distribution based on the original open-source desktop font produced by scict.ir and designed by Hossein Zahedi.^[21] According to the repository's documentation, the original version lacked font hinting and web format support; the repository's version 1 release introduced font hinting alongside WOFF support, and version 2 added WOFF2 support.^[21] Additionally, the HarfBuzz text-shaping engine renders the word حرف‌باز ("harf-baz") in its official logo using IranNastaliq.^[22]

• Islamic calligraphy
• Complex text layout