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// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did IranNastaliq say? "I'm font of knowledge

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
IranNastaliq
A sample Persian phrase rendered in IranNastaliq Version 3.09.
CategoryPerso-Arabic (Nastaliq style)
DesignerHossein Zahedi
Date createdFirst version: November 2007
Version 2: May 22, 2012
Version 3: early 2022
Latest: 3.09 (July 2024)

IranNastaliq (Persian: ایران نستعلیق) is a Perso-Arabic digital typeface that reproduces the Nastaliq calligraphic style in computing environments. Designed by Iranian type designer Hossein Zahedi, it supports the Persian and Arabic languages. Iran's Supreme Council of Information Dissemination (Persian: Showra-ye Aali-ye Ettela-Resani, شورای عالی اطلاع‌رسانی) commissioned and financed the font under TASMA (Persian: طرح تسما), a national program for producing and organizing Iran's electronic content.[1] It uses OpenType features to render Nastaliq's diagonal script on standard operating systems and applications, rather than through specialized typesetting software.[2]

History

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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]

Rendering error in the word "قشقایی"

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] Development then stalled for nearly a decade: the council was dissolved and Dadevarzan-e Hamoon ceased operating.[3]

According to the font's production team, Zahedi and Hossein Ghasemi-rad—production manager of the related Parwin word-processing software—revived the project independently starting in the Iranian calendar year 1400 (which began in March 2021), funding it themselves, and released the commercially licensed Version 3 in Bahman 1400 (roughly January–February 2022), distributed through IranNastaliq.ir and ParwinFont.[3][8] 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.[9] Zahedi has continued to release updates, with Version 3.09 published in mid-2024 (Tir 1403 in the Iranian calendar).[10] The initial release of Version 3 was numbered 3.03; several point updates followed before Version 3.09.[10]

Design and Typography

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The sentence "هفته خوبی داشته باشید" when rendered with IranNastaliq font above, and Jameel Noori Nastaleeq below

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][11] Before OpenType support existed, typesetting Nastaliq relied on specialized software such as Kelk.[2] Complex Nastaliq layouts can still produce rendering errors—broken or misaligned glyph sequences—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.[12]

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.[13][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.[14][15]

IranNastaliq was designed around the Nastaliq conventions favored in Iran, a regional style distinct from the Nastaliq traditions used for Urdu typesetting; in Iran, Nastaliq serves as the preferred national writing style, whereas in Pakistan and parts of India it is used extensively for Urdu specifically.[2][11]

Text Justification and Kashida

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The word "قشقایی" With Kashida

As in other Arabic-script typefaces, IranNastaliq justifies text by elongating certain letters (Kashida) rather than by expanding the spaces between words.[16] 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]

Rendering and Engine Support

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IranNastaliq's Nastaliq letterforms require an unusually large number of OpenType lookup tables, making the font comparatively demanding to shape; HarfBuzz maintainer Behdad Esfahbod cited it alongside the Arabic typeface Amiri and several Indic fonts as one of the "heavy" fonts motivating a 2017 effort to speed up HarfBuzz through vectorized lookups.[17] A 2012 comparative survey of Nasta'liq typesetting software reported that the font's file size and glyph count each ran to roughly seventeen and nineteen times those of a typical Persian font, respectively, at 1,048 KB and 4,200 glyphs against a baseline of around 60 KB and 220 glyphs.[2] The font has also directly shaped HarfBuzz's Arabic-shaping code: testing an early version of the engine against IranNastaliq in 2010, Esfahbod found its ligature for the word "Allah" broke when composition (ccmp) lookups ran too late in the pipeline, leading him to split Arabic shaping into ordered stages.[18] The engine still pauses between the Required Ligatures (rlig) and Contextual Alternates (calt) features specifically to keep IranNastaliq's Allah ligature forming correctly, according to a comment retained in its source code.[12]

Character Set and Web Integration

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The word حرف‌باز in the HarfBuzz logo is rendered in IranNastaliq

A GitHub repository credits developer Mohammad Saleh Souzanchi with producing a modified, web-optimized version of the font in WOFF and WOFF2 formats, reducing its file size for web use.[19] The text-shaping engine HarfBuzz renders the word حرف‌باز ("harf-baz") in its own logo using IranNastaliq.[20]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 "فونت نستعلیق دانلود کنید". Hamshahri Online (in Persian). November 16, 2007. Retrieved July 6, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kermaninejad, Farzan (2012). "Usage of Nasta'liq in the Modern Publications" (PDF). Typography Day. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "تاریخچه فونت ایران نستعلیق" [History of the IranNastaliq font]. IranNastaliq.ir (in Persian). Retrieved July 5, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "نسخه جديد فونت نستعليق عرضه شد". IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) (in Persian). May 22, 2012. Retrieved July 3, 2026.
  5. 1 2 "نسخه جدید فونت نستعلیق با رفع اشکالات گذشته عرضه شد". Mehr News Agency (in Persian). May 22, 2012. Retrieved July 21, 2026.
  6. 1 2 "Logic or public API to check if a font supports adding Kashida · Issue #1503". GitHub – HarfBuzz. December 21, 2018. Retrieved July 5, 2026.
  7. ↑ "نسخه جدید فونت نستعلیق را دریافت کنید". Lisna (in Persian). May 2012. Retrieved July 21, 2026.
  8. ↑ "تیم تولید و طراحی ایران نستعلیق 3" [The production and design team of IranNastaliq 3]. IranNastaliq.ir (in Persian). Retrieved July 5, 2026.
  9. ↑ "farsi-fonts/fonts-irannastaliq". GitHub. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  10. 1 2 "فونت ایران نستعلیق 3/09" [IranNastaliq Font 3/09]. IranNastaliq.ir (in Persian). Retrieved July 2, 2026.
  11. 1 2 Izadpanah, Borna (2025). "Simplifying Urdu: Nasta'liq Types for Mechanical Composition and the Forces of Colonization, Monopolization, and Ownership". Book History. 28 (1). Project MUSE: 58–122. doi:10.1353/bh.2025.a959456. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  12. 1 2 "hb-ot-shaper-arabic.cc". GitHub – HarfBuzz. Retrieved July 5, 2026.
  13. ↑ "IranNastaliq Official Website" (in Persian). Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  14. ↑ "xepersian – Persian (Farsi) support for XeLaTeX". CTAN. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  15. ↑ "User documentation for the XePersian package" (PDF). CTAN. December 31, 2025. Retrieved July 5, 2026.
  16. ↑ Sakkal, Mamoun (November 2010). "Issues in Arabic Typography: Kashidas & Diacritics" (PDF). Sakkal Design. Retrieved May 28, 2026.
  17. ↑ "Speedup using vectorization · Issue #566". GitHub - HarfBuzz. October 12, 2017. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  18. ↑ Esfahbod, Behdad (November 22, 2010). "On fallback shaping and future directions". harfbuzz mailing list, freedesktop.org. Retrieved July 5, 2026.
  19. ↑ "font-IranNastaliq README". GitHub. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
  20. ↑ "HarfBuzz text shaping engine". GitHub. Retrieved May 22, 2026.
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