One feature where Inpage 3.20 still beats modern Western software is Kashida (stretching of connecting lines between letters). In English, justification adds spaces. In Urdu, that looks ugly. Inpage 3.20 stretches the actual strokes between letters, maintaining the flow of the script. This is the "magic" of the software.
Inpage 3.20 is not just a word processor; it is a full-fledged DTP tool. Features include:
The fa ligature and the noon glyph in Noory Nastaleeq 1.5 (bundled with 3.20) have a specific curve that later versions "smoothed" out. For poetry (Shayari) and religious text (Quranic citations), the aesthetic of 3.20 is considered superior. inpage 3.20
InPage 3.20 is like a classic Urdu calligraphy pen – traditional, reliable, and unmatched for certain tasks. While modern software wins on portability and standards, InPage still owns the Nastaliq page layout space for many professionals.
If you’re running an Urdu press, newspaper, or design studio, keep it on a dedicated machine. If you’re starting fresh with Urdu digital writing, explore Unicode tools – but keep InPage 3.20 as a backup for those times when only perfect Nastaliq will do. One feature where Inpage 3
Have you used InPage 3.20? What’s your favorite feature or biggest frustration? Share your experience in the comments below.
This article wouldn't be honest without addressing the elephant in the room. Inpage 3.20 is archaic. Have you used InPage 3
The keyboard mapping for Urdu in 3.20 ("CRULP" or "Phonetic") has become industry standard. Professional typists in Karachi, Lahore, and Dubai can type 80+ words per minute on 3.20 because the shortcuts haven't changed in 20 years. Upgrading means retraining, which means lost revenue.
To understand Inpage 3.20, you must understand the technical nightmare of computing in the 1990s for non-Latin scripts. Standard English software used ASCII (7-bit) encoding, which left no room for the beautiful, cursive, context-sensitive nature of Arabic script (where a letter changes shape depending on its position in a word).
Inpage was originally developed in the 1990s by a company called Concept Software (later acquired by Pakistan-based Softech). Version 3.20 hit the market during the peak of Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
What made 3.20 revolutionary was its use of proprietary font technology (Noory Nastaleeq) and its ability to handle Kerning and Ligatures on the fly—something even Microsoft Word couldn't do properly until the late 2000s.