Urdu on Office Computers

Here is the way to start tying Urdu. It is quite easy after you have installed the Urdu language on your computer.

1. First install Urdu. Open Word. Click on File tab. Click Options towards the bottom on left. A box will appear.

In the Options box, click Language on the left.

Box on the right will show the languages already installed. If Urdu (Pakistan) is not there then

Choose the link

Install additional languages from Office.com

and follow directions.

2. Go to the same File/Options/Languages box and choose link

Install additional keyboard from Windows Settings

and follow directions.

3. After installing the Urdu language, you may go to www.urdu.ca and install the phonetic keyboard from there.

4. For tughra:

Select Insert menu on top.

On the top right side click the down arrow under Symbol. A box will appear that will show some symbols. Here will start appearing symbols that you use over time. Bottom of this small box, click More symbols...

A larger box will appear that will have small boxes with symbols in them. Scroll and see if it has the symbol you are looking for. If not then from top left in the symbols box chose an Urdu or Arabic font and look for the symbol you desire. Jameel Noori Nastaliq and other Urdu/Arabic fonts would have many of these symbols. After you find the symbol, click on it to highlight it and then click insert at the bottom of the box. It will be inserted in text at the point where the cursor is.

5. You may visit editurdu.blogspot.com to know how to use Urdu efficiently.

Editing Pictures

Before you resize a picture, make sure that fix aspect ratio is checked. 

Always resize from the corners and never from the sides. Resizing from the sides will squish or stretch a picture. 

If you resize from the corners and observe that the picture is elastic (it is not keeping aspect ratio) then it means that fix aspect ratio is not checked.

Information on Urdu, Persian and Arabic Fonts

Type Designin Iran
http://luc.devroye.org/iran.html

Qur'an Publishing Resources: Information on fonts and text
http://quran.mursil.com/

Text and Fonts for Qur'an 
http://www.noorehidayat.org/index.php?p=home

Some discussion on Arabic typography
http://ilovetypography.com/

ParsFont (Not free)
http://www.parsfont.com/font

Urdu in Word, InPage and Other Applications

Copying text from InPage to Word

As long as you can open an InPage file, you can convert it for use in Windows programs by going to urdu.ca. There you will see the following link

Click on this link and you will see the following page:

Copy text from InPage and paste it in the box on the page then click on the Convert button. The InPage text will be converted to Windows text. You can copy and paste it in Windows.

Caution: Please choose small portions to convert. Sometimes it gives up when a large amount of text is given to it to convert.

Having the text flow from right to left correctly

For the Urdu/Arabic text to flow correctly from right to left, select the text and click the button indicated in the picture below on the Home menu. 

For English text, you can revert to left to right flow by clicking on the button left to it.

Putting text in columns

• Select all the text that is to be put in columns. 
• Select the "Page Layout" menu. 
• Click on the "Columns" menu and select "More columns..." at the bottom of the drop down menu. This action displays the "Columns" dialog box. 
• In the "Columns" dialog box, select the number of desired columns. 
• Adjust "Spacing" to desired spacing between columns.
• Please see below to make sure that the columns in the right order (right to left).
• Click OK.

Whenever you want to change the number of columns, you can just follow the steps above. 

Removing Columns

If you want only one column then you can select the text which is in more than one columns. Click "Columns" and choose one column if you do not want columns.

Putting the Urdu columns in the right order

To make columns in Word for Urdu, select "Page Layout" menu. Then in the "Columns" drop down menu, select "More Columns..." and the following dialog box appears:

In the dialog box, check "Right-to-left" to the right of "Number of columns" for Urdu to have the columns display the right column to the right, and then click OK to register the change.

Aligning and Justifying Urdu Poetry

The Misra'as (lines) of a Shi'r (couplet) come out uneven when typed in Word. How to make all the lines the same length? I use the following method to accomplish this task. 

First step: After typing poetry, or during typing poetry, replace all the "Returns/Enters" at the end of the Misra'as with "Shit+Return" by holding down the shift key and then pushing the "Return" key just like when you want to type a capital letter; you keep the Shift key pushed and then push the character you want to capitalize. So we can say that we capitalize all the "Returns/Enters" at the end of the Misra'as. This creates an extra line at the end of the Nazm. The extra line can be given size 1 text size to make it almost disappear.

Second step: Select all the poem and justify the text from the "Home" menu by choosing "Justified" from the alignment menu in "Paragraph" block. You can also open the paragraph menu and then choose Alignment as Justified. This step makes all the lines equal size looking like poetry. For this method to work, we have to use Capitalized Return/Enter at  the end of each line (Misra'a).

In short, follow the following three steps to arrange and align Urdu couplets:

1. End each line with "Capitalized Enter," that is, rather than just pressing Enter at the end of a line, keep pressed Shift key and then press Enter.

2. Justify the lines like you justify any paragraph to align both sides straight. Select all the poetry and justify it.

3. Adjust the right and left indents to position and fit each line.

The following video provides little more details:

http://tune.pk/video/462451/urdu-poetry-settings-in-any-version-ms-word

How to know whether you have typed Enter/Return or Shift+Enter/Return at the end of a line

On the Home menu, turn on the Show button pointed to by the red arrow in the picture above. When this button is highlighted/turned-on, you can see the invisible characters like spaces and line breaks as shown in the picture below.

Starting a new page in Word

Go to the Insert menu and then click on "Page Break." By inserting page breaks, new articles can be started from the top of the page and you do not need to continue adjusting text all over the file as you type in new stuff or as you edit an article.

Copying text from Acrobat

Make sure the text highlighter is chosen (the left button in the picture below) from the Acrobat menu to select text in Acrobat.