This page is intended to serve as a starting point for those who are interested in contributing towards the development of Urdu resources for the Digital Islamic Library Project (DILP). We hope that the guidelines provided will get you started quickly. Since the development of Urdu resources is still in its initial stages, your feedback, advice and suggestions for improvement are welcome. Given below are the preferred font, word-processing utility and other relevant files.

The true-type font, "Urdu Naqsh" is required for developing the Urdu text / html by the developers / composers. The viewers will need to have this font installed in their system in order to view the urdu webpages. Please download the font appropriate for your system from these locations:

The shareware word processing utility Parsnegar (ver. 1.25) allows composition of urdu text, and can be downloaded from this link:

Once you have downloaded and installed Parsnegar, you will need to install the definition modules for Parsnegar, which are available at this link:

Unzip this file using the Winzip utility too.

Once you have downloaded and unzipped all of the above files, start Parsnegar and carry out the following steps:

Under the "Setup" Menu, select "Add Font".

Select Next twice. A new window is opened displaying the fonts installed in your system.

Select "Urdu Naqsh" and click OK.

In the next window, browse to the directory where you saved the Parsneger definition modules, and choose the file "Urdunqsh.def" and click Done.

Under the "Setup" Menu, select "Add Keyboard".

Select the file "urdunaqsh.kbd" and click OK.

Under the "Setup" Menu, select "General".

Under "Font Name", select the font "Urdu Naqsh".

Make sure that all the options under "Character Management" are selected.

Under the "Tool" Menu, select "Select Keyboard".

Select "Urdu Khat-e-Naqsh".

You can now use Parsnegar to compose Urdu Text.

To add the "ayraab" (phonetic symbols), you need to turn "Contextual Analysis" off, in the Setup / General Menu. Contextual Analysis should be turned on again to type urdu text.

Parsnegar 1.25 hasn't got the capability to change the font size, style, colour, etc. for only a part of the text. However, once the text is typed in it, you can copy and paste it to Netscape Composer, MS-Word, etc. and apply the styles and formatting changes there.

You can use the "On screen keyboard" option under the Tools menu to show an on-screen keyboard which assists in typing the Urdu text.

The reasons for selecting the above font and wordprocessing utility are that this allows us to type and edit true Urdu text, which can be copied and pasted to other powerful Word processors like Word, etc and can be formatted and edited easily. Note that this is different from softwares like Katib or Powerpage (Inpage) which are either not compatible with HTML, or export images of Urdu text, instead of true text. Furthermore, phonetic symbols and other signs can be added using the above setup, which is not possible in some other urdu composition software. However if you are aware of a better, more powerful and cost-effective composition utility which will serve the above purposes, then please inform us about it.

Your contribution and participation in the development of Urdu resources is highly appreciated. Please direct other Momineen interested in contributing to Urdu development, to this page. To avoid duplication of efforts and for better coordination of the contributing volunteers, please contact us for advice regarding the titles and texts that need to be digitized, before starting digitization of any resource.

Please write to us regarding any problems or questions that you may have.