PublishingDesk

1. Getting started

Create a document

File → New… (or the New toolbar button) opens the template gallery:

• Paper — A-series (A3/A4/A5…) and US (Letter/Legal…).
• Social Media — Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and more.
• Print — business card, postcard, poster, and similar.
• Custom — type an exact width × height.

Each card shows an aspect-accurate preview and its dimensions; use the Landscape toggle to flip orientation before creating. Documents open as tabs — you can have several open at once. A tab with unsaved changes shows a *, and closing a tab or the app prompts you to save.

A 60-second tour

1. Click the Text tool (or press-and-hold it to choose Urdu/complex-script instead of English), then click or drag on the page to drop a frame and double-click it to type.
2. Click the Image tool to place a picture, or the Shape tool for a rectangle, ellipse or any of nine shapes.
3. Drag objects to move them; drag the corner handles to resize; drag the small handle above an object to rotate.
4. Use the Properties panel (right) to set exact position, size, rotation and opacity.
5. File → Save (Ctrl+S) to a .pubdesk file.

2. The workspace

• Menu bar — File, Edit, Page, Insert, Arrange, Table, View, Tools, Help.
• Tool palette (left edge) — three flyout tools: Image, Text and Shape. Click a tool’s icon to use whichever variant it’s currently showing; press and hold it (or click its corner triangle) to pick a different variant — your pick becomes the icon’s new default, remembered across restarts.
• Navigator panel (left, below the tool palette) — a live tree of every page and the frames/shapes/images on it. Click a page to jump to it; click a frame to jump to its page and select it. It also carries each layer’s show/hide, lock and drag-to-restack controls.
• Toolbar (icons) — New / Open / Save / Export / Print · Undo / Redo · z-order · Delete.
• Format bar (appears when a text frame is selected) — font, size, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, alignment, colour, and (once you’ve created any) paragraph and character style pickers. It reports the formatting at the caret — click into a word set in 48pt and Font, Latin font and Size show what that word is, not the frame’s own defaults, following the caret into a Row Layout track or a table cell too. It wraps onto a second row on a narrow window rather than clipping.
• Canvas — your page, with optional rulers, grid, margins/guides.
• Properties panel (right, full-height) — grouped, collapsible cards for the selected object.
• Pages strip (bottom) — page thumbnails, page tools, master-page chips, page navigation, and zoom.

Ruler guides

Turn on View → Rulers, then drag out of a ruler to place a guide — down from the top ruler for a horizontal one, right out of the left ruler for a vertical one. Drag a guide to move it, or drag it off the page to remove it, and objects snap to it as you position them. Guides are yours to place (unlike the derived margin/column guides) and never print or export.

3. Pages & facing-page spreads

All page tools live in the Pages strip at the bottom (and mirror in the Page menu).

• Add page (＋), Duplicate page, Delete page.
• Move page earlier / later (up/down arrows) to reorder.
• Previous / Next (‹ / ›) buttons and clickable page thumbnails to navigate. The selected page is highlighted with a blue border.

Page size, orientation, margins

• Page → Page Size… — change the current page’s dimensions.
• Page → Portrait / Landscape — flip orientation.
• Page → Margins & Guides… — set margins (left/top/right/bottom), columns (count + gutter) and a baseline-grid spacing. These are non-printing guides; show/hide them with View → Margins & Guides. (New pages start with no margins, so set them here first if the toggle shows nothing.) With a baseline grid set, dragging a text frame snaps its first line’s baseline to the nearest grid line, not the frame’s box edge.

Page numbers

• Page → Insert Page Number — drops an auto-updating page-number field on the current page.
• Page → Insert Page Number on All Pages — numbers every page at once (skips any that already have one); a single Undo removes them all.

Pages that grow and shrink with your text

Turn on “Add and remove pages automatically as text grows” in Page Setup (off by default) and a page is added the moment a story overflows the last page in its chain, and removed again if it’s empty. A page is only ever removed automatically if this feature created it and nothing has been added to it since — a page you’ve put a photo on is never taken away from under you.

Facing pages (spreads)

Turn on Facing pages (spreads) in Page → Margins & Guides… and pages pair up as spreads in the pages strip, with a small “L”/“R” badge next to each page in the Navigator. Margins switch from Left/Right to Inside/Outside, and the inside margin (nearer the spine) mirrors automatically between a left page and its facing right page. Choose whether the document starts on a right-hand page (the default, matching a printed magazine’s page 1) or a left-hand one. A master page pair imported from InDesign as a facing spread resolves automatically to whichever side matches once facing pages is on. It’s off by default, and existing documents load and print exactly as before.

4. Master pages

A master page is a reusable template that sits behind your pages and holds repeating “furniture” — headers, footers, page numbers, logos, borders. Design it once and apply it to the pages you choose; change the master and every page using it updates. (Same concept as InDesign’s parent pages or PowerPoint’s slide master.) One master applies per page — applying a different one replaces the previous.

In the MASTERS section of the pages strip:

• A / B / C chips — one per master; click a chip to edit that master.
• ＋ — create a new master.
• Apply ▾ — choose Apply to This Page → (master), or Remove from This Page.

While editing a master, no page is highlighted; click any page to return to it. Each page thumbnail shows a small badge with the letter of the master applied to it. The same actions are in Page → Master Pages.

5. Layers & objects

Every object — text, image, shape, table, imported path — is a layer on the current page.

Adding objects

The tool palette has three flyout tools:

The two text variants create the same kind of frame — they differ only in the language and font they start with, and either frame’s language can be changed later (see English text). Clicking a tool arms a placement cursor rather than dropping the object immediately: click on the page to place it at its default size, drag to draw it at exactly the size you want, or press Escape to cancel.

Placing images

There are three ways to put a picture on the page, all reachable from the Image tool’s flyout and from Insert → Image. Pick by what you want the text to do:

Inline image behaves like a large character — type or delete text above it and it moves with the paragraph, and deleting the text it’s anchored to removes it too. Wrap image is the magazine one: once placed, right-click it to choose Square (text runs beside it), Top and Bottom (text jumps clear of it) or No Wrap, and which margin it docks to. Drag to reposition, drag a corner to resize. Page image is an independent object, like a shape; text never flows around it. Inline and Wrap image need a text frame selected first, or they grey out.

Shaped pictures & Contour Wrap

Right-click a wrap image for two settings that work together:

• Clip Shape draws the picture clipped to a circle, oval, arch, star or any other closed shape instead of a rectangle — an Arch (a rectangle with a domed top) is the traditional shape for an arched picture panel, and it’s also on the Shape tool for drawing one on its own.
• Contour Wrap makes the surrounding text hug that shape rather than its bounding box — pushed out where the shape is widest, closer where it narrows. Pick a Clip Shape first; Contour Wrap on an unclipped image behaves like Square, so it’s never a surprise.

Anchor to Paragraph makes a wrap image travel with the copy it illustrates — without it, a picture stays at a fixed spot even as paragraphs above it grow. Off by default, so nothing in an existing document moves until you turn it on.

Border art

Insert → Border Art… places a decorative full-page image — ornamental borders and backgrounds idiomatic to Urdu and Islamic publishing — behind everything else on the page. If the art has a clear centre (a ring with a hole for text), PublishingDesk scans for it automatically and offers to set the page’s margins to match, so the ornament and your text can’t overlap by accident. Insert it while editing a master to repeat the same art on every page that master applies to. The art is locked in place so it can’t be nudged or selected by accident; find it in the Navigator to remove or replace it. Tick Mirror on left-hand pages in the image’s properties to flip it horizontally on verso pages, so one piece of art serves both sides of a spread with its heavy edge to the outside.

Page border line

For a plain ruled border rather than ornamental art, Insert → Page Border Line… draws one around the whole page automatically — set how far in from the paper’s edge it sits, its width, its colour, and whether it’s solid, dashed, dotted or a double rule. What it places is an ordinary rectangle you can restyle, move or delete afterwards like any other shape; solid/dashed/dotted/double is available on any shape’s border, not only a page border.

Selecting & manipulating

• Click to select; click empty page to deselect; Ctrl+click to multi-select.
• Drag the body to move; drag a corner/edge handle to resize; drag the handle above an object to rotate (hold Shift to snap to 15°).
• An armed tool now draws on top of an existing object instead of just selecting it, so you can place a shape or image over something already on the page. Smart snapping/guides appear while dragging; turn on Snap to Grid in the View menu for grid snapping.

Properties panel

Grouped into collapsible cards: LAYER (name + opacity), TRANSFORM (X/Y, W/H, rotation), and a type-specific card — TEXT FRAME (language, size, line spacing, colour, effects, fill/border/corner-radius, columns), APPEARANCE (shape fill/border), or IMAGE (stretch mode, crop). Every colour field is a swatch + hex box that opens the colour picker (see below).

Layers panel & document layers

The Navigator carries each object’s show/hide and lock (a locked layer can’t be moved, resized, rotated or edited), and you can drag a layer up/down to restack it within its page (undoable).

A separate Layers panel holds document-wide layers — named layers that every object on every page (and on a master) belongs to, independent of which page it’s on, each with its own show/hide and lock. Create a layer, rename it in place, reorder it with the arrow buttons, and delete it once it’s empty; right-click an item in the Navigator for Move to Layer. Existing documents load with everything on a single default layer.

Colour swatches

Tools → Colour Swatches… manages a document-wide palette of named, editable colours. Every colour picker in the app — shape/path fill and stroke, frame background and border, text colour, page background — draws from this same palette. Edit a swatch once and every run of text, rule, shape, frame and page background linked to it updates immediately. The picker also has a Tint slider to lighten a swatch toward white while it stays fully opaque, and a hex box for one-off colours that aren’t worth naming.

Arrange (align & distribute)

• Arrange → Align Left / Center / Right / Top / Middle / Bottom — needs 2+ objects.
• Arrange → Distribute Horizontally / Vertically — needs 3+ objects; spaces their centres evenly along that axis.

6. Tables

Insert → Table… places a table at the caret in a text frame, so it flows with the text around it. Insert → Table (Wrap)… places one that floats instead, with the body text wrapping around it — the same idea as a wrap image. Insert → Edit Table… reopens the dialog for the table at the caret; Delete Table removes it.

Typing straight into a cell

You don’t need a dialog to type in a table — click straight into a cell and you get a real caret, in the actual typeface, Nastaliq included.

• Type and select as you would anywhere else, including drag-select inside a cell.
• Format the selection from the format bar — bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, font, size, colour, and the cell’s horizontal alignment — so you can make one word in a cell bold.
• Tab / Shift+Tab move to the next / previous cell, wrapping at the end of a row — works the same in Urdu as in English. Arrow keys move to the next cell once the caret is at the edge of a cell’s text.
• Escape steps back out one level at a time: first out of the cell into the frame’s own text, then out of the frame.

A floating (wrap) table is an object first: the first click selects it (so you can move, resize or delete it), and a second click puts the caret in a cell. Drag it by the small square just outside its top-left corner, and resize it by the handle at its bottom-right — width only, since a table’s height always follows its rows. Drop it near either margin and it docks there; wrap mode and side are on its right-click menu and in the properties panel.

The Insert/Edit Table dialog

For structure, and anything that applies to the whole table:

• Column widths — a row of boxes above the grid, relative to each other (2:1:1 gives the first column twice the others, at any table width).
• Row height — one box per row; blank means auto (as tall as the text needs), a number is a minimum so content that needs more room is never clipped.
• Cell background and vertical alignment — click a cell, then set its background colour and whether its text sits top/middle/bottom in the row.
• Merging cells — select two or more cells in the same row and press Merge cells; Unmerge splits one back up. Column merges only — no row merges yet.
• Border — style (solid/dashed/dotted/none), width and colour for the whole grid.

Resizing the row/column count keeps whatever still fits — text, widths, backgrounds, heights, alignments and per-selection formatting for cells that survive the resize are kept, not reset.

7. English (Latin) text

Add with the Text tool set to English, and double-click to type.

How formatting is applied, from the format bar and Properties panel:

• Text selected → changes only the selection.
• Caret only, editing → sets the pending format — what you type next uses it; existing text is untouched (like Word).
• Frame selected, not editing → changes the whole frame, and clears any per-paragraph alignment override.

Hyphenation

Narrow columns read badly when long words are pushed whole to the next line. Turn on Edit → Paragraph… → “Break words across lines” and PublishingDesk splits long words at proper hyphenation points, drawing a hyphen at the break; justified text fills the measure including it. It’s off by default — switching it on re-breaks that paragraph’s lines, so existing documents keep exactly the line breaks they had until you ask for it. No more than two lines in a row end in a hyphen. The checkbox only appears on an English frame; Urdu, Persian, Pashto, Sindhi and Arabic justify by kashida instead — see Urdu text.

Drop caps

Edit → Paragraph… → Drop Cap (Lines) enlarges a paragraph’s first letter to span its first few lines — the classic magazine lede treatment. Set it to 0 to turn it off. English/LTR only for now; if a frame’s language later changes to right-to-left, the drop cap simply stops rendering rather than misrendering, and switching back restores it.

8. Urdu / complex-script text

This is PublishingDesk’s specialty. Add with the Text tool set to Urdu/complex-script; double-click to type. Letters join correctly (Nastaliq shaping) for Urdu, Persian, Pashto and Arabic.

Typing Urdu — fourteen keyboard layouts

Every language you can set on a frame types in its own script: Urdu (the standard layout, Phonetic Roman→Urdu, and the Windows standard), Persian (three layouts), Arabic, Pashto (two), Sindhi, plus Punjabi/Shahmukhi, Saraiki and Balochi, and an English layout that forces Latin even when Windows itself is set to an Urdu keyboard. Nothing needs installing in Windows.

The ⌨ keyboard button on the format bar is a switcher: it names the layout you’re actually typing with (a Sindhi frame no longer just says “Urdu”), and the arrow beside it lists every layout that frame’s language offers, so you can change it without leaving the page. Clicking the button itself — or Ctrl+Space — flips between that layout and typing straight through the Windows keyboard, which the button then reads as OS. Tools → Options → Keyboard Layouts (formerly the “Urdu” tab) lists every RTL language, with its own layouts first. Mixed direction works — English words and numbers inside an Urdu frame sit left-to-right in the right-to-left line.

Fonts, justification, kashida (kasheeda)

Switch among the bundled Nastaliq/Arabic fonts from the Font dropdown, or add your own (see Installing fonts). Set a paragraph to Justified and PublishingDesk fills each line by elongating the script’s connecting strokes (tatweel) instead of opening gaps between words.

Araabs (diacritics)

Zabar, zer, pesh, tashdeed and the rest mostly can’t be typed on an ordinary keyboard, and there’s no key you could guess. Select an Urdu/Persian/Pashto/Sindhi/Arabic frame and the ARAABS panel appears in Properties, with a button for each of the 21 marks PublishingDesk knows — the eight core tashkeel, the rarer marks (khari zabar, ulta pesh, zer-e-izafat, maddah, the two hamzas), and honorifics including ﷺ. Double-click into the frame to place the caret, then click a mark to insert it; hover any button for its name in Urdu and English. The panel is hidden on an English frame.

Araabs can also be typed directly — hold AltGr (Ctrl+Alt) with a key for the marks that used to need the palette: i khari zabar, u ulta pesh, f zer-e-izafat, m maddah, ’ hamza above, 1 ﷺ, and the rest. The Urdu, Pashto and Arabic Windows layouts additionally carry their own standard’s own AltGr marks, where the standard defines them.

Columns, first baseline, vertical justify & column span

These live in the frame’s Properties panel (Columns/Balance/First Baseline/Vertical Justify) and in Edit → Paragraph… (Column Span, Single line) — and apply to English frames too, since English and Urdu now share the same frame type.

• Columns. Set a frame’s Columns count and Gutter; text flows down the first column then the next, right-to-left for Urdu.
• Balance Columns. A multi-column frame’s columns end roughly level instead of the last one running short.
• First Baseline. Where the first line sits relative to the frame’s top inset: Ascent (default), Cap Height, Leading, or a Fixed distance.
• Vertical Justify. How content sits when it’s shorter than the box: Top (default), Center or Bottom.
• Column Span. A headline paragraph can span several of a frame’s columns; the text below resumes in every spanned column.
• Single line, fit to measure. A paragraph that never wraps — stretched or condensed to fill the frame’s width instead (kashida first on Arabic-script text, then a uniform scale). Built for verse/translation pairings; see Row Layout.

Per-selection styling & alignment

B / I / U / S (bold/italic/underline/strikethrough) sit on the format bar and in the properties panel, and light up to show the real state of the text under the caret — a selection spanning bold and non-bold text lights nothing. Underline and strikethrough can combine with each other and with the box/pattern/reverse fills from Edit → Character…, which also sets letter-spacing, horizontal scale and baseline shift.

Alignment — left, centre, right, justify (last line ragged, kashida on capable fonts) and force justify (every line stretched, including the last, as InPage does) — lives in the PARAGRAPH card and format bar. Natural is the default: right for Urdu and other RTL scripts, left for English. While editing, alignment applies to the paragraph the caret is in or every paragraph the selection touches; with the frame merely selected it sets the whole frame.

9. Row Layout — verse with translation

Row Layout stacks two or three independently-typed lines in every row — a Quranic verse above its tarjuma, a hadith above its translation, Persian poetry above an Urdu rendering, a bilingual textbook. Each stacked line is a track.

Turning it on

1. Select a text frame (unlink it first if it’s threaded to others).
2. Insert → Row Layout (Translation)…
3. Choose 2 tracks (source + translation) or 3 (source, transliteration, translation).

The frame’s existing text becomes the first track; the others start as empty, clickable boxes. The track count is fixed once it’s on — to change it, turn Row Layout off and back on.

Typing in a track

Click the line you want to type in. That track takes the caret and the format bar switches to that track’s language, font and size — so a verse can be Nastaliq at 28pt while its translation is a Latin face at 16pt. Enter starts a new line in that track only; arrow keys stay inside the track you’re in.

Rows, rules and gaps

Select the frame and use its ROW LAYOUT properties card: Row rule (colour, width, solid/dashed/dotted — 0 width for none) and Row gap (blank space between rows; 0 makes rows touch and share one rule). If a row won’t fit, every track breaks at the same row and continues together in the next linked frame or page, so the verse and its translation can’t drift apart.

Find, spell check and the Story Editor

All three see every track, not just the one you’re typing in — each checked against its own language’s dictionary, and the Story Editor gets a track picker so you can edit one track as a continuous galley.

Turning it off

Insert → Turn Off Row Layout… merges the tracks back into one ordinary frame, row by row (each verse line followed by its translation line). The text is kept in full; the pairing and per-character formatting are not, and you’re warned before it happens.

10. Paragraph & character styles

Tools → Paragraph & Character Styles… creates, edits and deletes named paragraph and character styles with a based-on chain. Apply one from the “¶ Style” / “A Style” combos in the format bar — a bare caret targets just that paragraph, a selection covers every paragraph it spans. Editing a style’s definition updates every paragraph or run using it immediately; nothing needs re-applying.

Every paragraph style (and a paragraph’s own direct formatting) can also set Keep With Next, Keep Lines Together, and a minimum number of lines at the bottom/top of a frame (widow/orphan control) — respected wherever a story flows across frames or columns.

11. Text effects & lists

Text effects

Select a text frame and use the Effects editor in its properties card: apply a preset, or set individual Fill, Outline and Shadow (plus glow, inner-shadow and bevel). Effects render on both English and Urdu frames and are saved with the document.

Text and paragraph backgrounds

Text background — select some words and give them a background colour from the Properties panel’s Text Background swatch, a highlighter over the text itself; Clear removes it. Paragraph background, from the panel’s Paragraph Background swatch, is one clean fill behind the whole paragraph the caret is in, with a choice of how wide it runs: indent to indent (the full measure, less that paragraph’s own indents) or text (hugging the words, so a short last line leaves the fill short). In a Row Layout track, the paragraph background is the row background — shade the translation track and it reads as one continuous tint down the page, including at rows where that track is still empty. Both colours can be linked to a named colour swatch, can be carried by a named character or paragraph style, undo normally, and appear in PDF/image exports as well as on screen.

Bulleted & numbered lists

Set a paragraph’s List and Level from Edit → Paragraph. Numbering counts per level and nests — a nested list resumes its parent’s sequence after the indented items — and numbers are written in Urdu digits (۱، ۲، ۳) in a right-to-left paragraph. When a Nastaliq face has no bullet glyph, PublishingDesk draws the bullet itself as a disc, ring or square that cycles with depth.

12. Opening InPage files

PublishingDesk reads InPage files directly — the pages, frames and text come across as a real layout you can edit, not as a flat picture or a wall of plain text.

• File → Open and pick the .inp file. (PublishingDesk recognises an InPage document by its contents, so it works even if the file has an odd extension.)
• Or File → Import → InPage Document (.inp), which does the same thing.

What comes across: pages and page setup, master pages, every frame with its position, size, rotation, columns, border and background; linked/threaded text that flows from box to box; per-word formatting (font, size, bold/italic, colour, decoration); paragraph settings (alignment, indents, spacing, tab stops); tables including merged cells and column widths; pictures; rules and lines; and ruler guides. Files from InPage 2.21 through 2024 all work.

What to expect afterwards

• Urdu text will look close, but not pixel-identical. InPage documents are set in Noori/Jameel-class Nastaliq faces, which can’t legally be shipped inside another app — so PublishingDesk substitutes its bundled Noto Nastaliq and rescales the text to compensate, and lines may break in slightly different places. For the closest match, add Jameel Noori Nastaleeq yourself and apply it to the imported frames (see Installing fonts).
• A table lands at the end of its frame’s text, rather than at the exact point in the flow where InPage had it. Drag it where you want it.
• Not yet drawn: hatch/pattern fills, arrowheads on lines, and picture frames clipped to an ellipse — these come through as plain fills, plain lines and rectangles.

13. Opening InDesign files

PublishingDesk reads InDesign (.idml) documents — the files InDesign writes with File → Export…, and the ones commercial template packs ship alongside their .indd.

• File → Open and pick the .idml file (it is recognised by its contents, like .inp).
• Or File → Import → InDesign (.idml).

What comes across: every page of every spread, with its size, margins, columns and ruler guides; master spreads as master pages (a facing master becomes an L and an R, and resolves correctly once you turn on facing pages); text frames with position, size, rotation, columns, fill and stroke; threaded stories flowing from frame to frame in the order InDesign linked them; paragraph and character styles flattened onto the text (size, weight, italic, colour, tracking, baseline shift, underline, alignment, indents, space before/after, leading, tab stops, bullets and numbering); tables; rectangles, ovals, polygons and curved frames; lines; swatch colours in CMYK, RGB and Lab, with gradients and tints flattened to a solid; and placed images, cropped by their frame the way InDesign crops them.

What to expect afterwards

• A native .indd file cannot be read — it is an undocumented format. Open it in InDesign and File → Export… an .idml first; it is a one-click step, and most template packs include the .idml already.
• Keep the Document fonts folder next to the file. If the document was packaged from InDesign, PublishingDesk loads those faces automatically and the layout matches. Without the real fonts a substitute is used, and because InDesign sizes frames tightly around their text, a substitute with different proportions can push the last line of a frame out of its box. Installing the document’s fonts is the single biggest thing you can do for fidelity.
• Text does not wrap around objects yet. InDesign templates lean on text wrap heavily, so a column that ran around a photo will run through it for now. Everything is in the right place — the text just doesn’t step aside.
• Linked images need to be findable. A packaged document’s Links/ folder beside the .idml works; a link pointing at a folder that no longer exists leaves an empty frame. Vector placements (EPS, PDF, AI) are left empty rather than half-drawn.
• A line or two may still clip in a very tightly-sized frame. PublishingDesk measures a typeface by the full extent of its ink so that Nastaliq is never cut off, which places the first line slightly lower than InDesign does. Nudge the frame’s height a little and it resolves.
• Master items sit behind everything by default — use document layers to put a master’s furniture above or below your own page content if a full-bleed master background hides a running header.
• Not carried: anchored objects, transparency and blend effects, nested and GREP styles, text on a path, and strikethrough.

14. Importing text, autoflow & SVG

File → Import is a single submenu: InPage and InDesign at the top, then Text, Autoflow and SVG.

Import text into a frame

File → Import → Text Into Selected Frame pours a .txt/.md/.docx file into the selected complex-script (Urdu) frame, preserving RTL.

Autoflow across pages

File → Import → Text, Autoflow Across Pages treats the selected frame’s page as a template, duplicates it as many times as needed, and threads the text through all the copies (carrying the page’s border/graphics).

Import SVG

File → Import → SVG brings an SVG’s vector shapes/paths in as editable Path layers. Embedded images, gradients and live text aren’t imported (vector shapes only).

Recolouring an imported shape: select it and the APPEARANCE panel gives you fill, stroke colour and stroke thickness, plus the object-style dropdown — the same controls as a shape you drew yourself.

Threading frames into a story

Click a chain’s out-port (the small arrow at its bottom-right corner) to load the story, then click another frame to link it — or drag on empty canvas to create a new frame sized to the drag and link it in one step. Linking a frame that already has its own text appends that text onto the end of the story rather than discarding it. Threaded frames show blue in/out port markers, and View → Show Text Threads draws an arrow between every linked pair. A threaded frame’s Properties panel has a Story Chain card showing its position (“Frame 3 of 5”), with Prev/Next Frame and Move Earlier/Later buttons.

15. Find & Replace

Ctrl+F (or Edit → Find & Replace…) searches all text frames — Urdu and English. Use Find Next, Replace and Replace All.

• Urdu keyboard checkbox: on → type Urdu (translated via the in-app keyboard); off → type plain Latin to find embedded English. It defaults to the selected frame’s script and you can flip it any time.
• Regex — switch on pattern-based search (e.g. \d+, [A-Z]\w+) over the raw text, for when plain search isn’t precise enough. Off by default; an invalid or runaway pattern is reported rather than silently matching nothing.
• Ignore case (Latin) affects embedded Latin only (Urdu has no case).

16. Exporting & printing

File → Export:

• As PNG — raster image (2× scale), colours and transparency preserved.
• As PDF — vector; Urdu shaping preserved as crisp glyph outlines.
• As SVG (Pro) — vector paths plus embedded images.
• As PDF for Print (Pro) — adds a bleed area and crop marks for professional printing.
• Preflight (Pro) — checks the document and reports issues before you export.

File → Print prints the current page, or use Print… (all pages) with a page range. Pages print at your printer’s own resolution, so fine Nastaliq strokes and hairline rules stay sharp. Per-layer opacity is honoured in every export and in print.

17. Free vs Pro

PublishingDesk is free to use — the whole designer is open, with no account and no time limit. A one-time Pro upgrade unlocks professional output.

The free watermark is a small “Made with PublishingDesk” badge in the corner of exported/printed pages; Pro removes it everywhere. Upgrade any time via Help → Upgrade to Pro…, or pick a Pro export and you’ll be offered the upgrade. Pro is a one-time purchase (not a subscription) and re-unlocks automatically on your other Windows devices signed in to the same store account — including when you’re offline.

18. Saving, recovery & files

• Save / Save As (Ctrl+S) writes a .pubdesk file capturing pages, every layer, effects, opacity, masters, tables, styles and page setup (images are embedded, so the file is self-contained). Documents now save in a considerably smaller, quicker format — a sample document went from 11 KB to under 2 KB. A document from an older version still opens, and always will; opening and saving it converts it to the new format, which PublishingDesk mentions once, the first time it happens.
• Open from Explorer — double-click a .pubdesk or .inp file to open it in the running app.
• File → Open Recent lists recently used documents.
• Autosave & crash recovery — your work is autosaved periodically; if the app closes unexpectedly, it offers to recover unsaved changes on next launch.
• Damaged-file recovery — if a file won’t open at all (an interrupted save, a copy that stopped, a sync client cut off mid-file), PublishingDesk now offers to recover what can still be read, as a new untitled document, leaving the damaged original untouched. Recovery may be incomplete; it’s offered instead of nothing, not instead of a backup.
• Window size/position is remembered between sessions.

19. Installing fonts

PublishingDesk ships with a curated set of free Nastaliq/Arabic-script fonts (Noto Nastaliq Urdu — the default — plus Gulzar, Amiri, Scheherazade New, Noto Naskh Arabic, Lateef, Markazi Text, Estedad, Vazirmatn), and uses your Windows system fonts for everything else. You can add any font you like — including popular Nastaliq fonts that aren’t bundled.

Seeing each font before you pick it

Every row in the Font list draws a sample of real text beside its name, set in the language of the frame you’re working in and shaped by the same engine that sets your page — so a Nastaliq face shows properly joined Nastaliq, and what the list shows is what you get on the page. A second column shows how that face handles English, which is what usually decides whether you also need a separate Latin font — a blank column means the face has no usable Latin of its own. A face that can’t set your language at all falls back to showing its own script, rather than a row of empty boxes; the Latin font list has samples too. Turn samples off in Tools → Options → Fonts if you have a very large font folder and want the list to open as fast as possible.

How to add your own fonts (2 steps, no restart)

1. In the app, go to Tools → Install Fonts…
2. Pick one or more .ttf / .otf files and click Open.

Your fonts appear in the Font dropdowns immediately — no restart needed — and a summary reports what arrived, and why anything was skipped. Tools → Open Fonts Folder… opens your personal fonts folder directly if you’d rather see it yourself; anything dropped in there by hand is picked up next launch.

20. Tips & tricks

• Scrub any number. Hover a numeric field and scroll the wheel, or focus it and press ↑/↓. Great for nudging position/size/opacity.
• Use named styles for anything you’ll reuse. Set up a paragraph style once (Paragraph & character styles) and every heading or caption using it updates together when you change your mind.
• Row Layout for anything paired line-by-line — verse and translation, hadith and rendering, a bilingual textbook. See Row Layout.
• Click straight into a table cell instead of reaching for the dialog — the dialog is still there for structure (merges, column widths, row heights), but day-to-day typing is faster on the canvas.
• Named colour swatches keep a document’s palette consistent — set one up early and every fill, stroke and text colour you pick from it stays in sync if you change your mind later.
• Use your favourite Nastaliq font (e.g. Jameel Noori). It isn’t bundled (licensing), but Tools → Install Fonts… adds it in seconds, no restart. See Installing fonts.
• Stretch Urdu with kashida. Set a paragraph to Justified with a tatweel-capable font and lines fill by elongating the strokes, not by opening gaps.
• Autoflow a whole document. Make a modestly sized frame (not full-page), then Import Text → Autoflow a long file, or turn on automatic page add/remove and just keep typing.
• Master pages + document layers for repeating furniture. Put your header/footer/page-number/border on a master, and use a layer to make sure it sits behind (or in front of) your page content.
• Regex Find & Replace for pattern clean-up across a long document — e.g. normalising numerals or stray punctuation.
• Shift while rotating snaps to 15° — handy for straight or diagonal placement.
• Preflight before you export to catch issues early.

21. Keyboard shortcuts

22. Troubleshooting

• My imported InPage file looks slightly different. Expected — the original Nastaliq faces can’t be shipped inside an app, so a substitute is used and text may break at different points. Add the original font (usually Jameel Noori Nastaleeq) and apply it to the frames — see Installing fonts.
• A table from InPage is in the wrong place in the text. Tables land at the end of their frame’s text rather than at the exact point in the flow. Drag it where you want it.
• Saving an imported file asks for a new name. By design — an imported document is untitled so Save can’t overwrite your original .inp or .idml. Save it as a .pubdesk file.
• PublishingDesk won’t open my .indd file. A native InDesign file is an undocumented format and can’t be read. Open it in InDesign and File → Export… an .idml — most template packs include one already.
• The last line of a frame is cut off in an imported document. InDesign and InPage size frames tightly around their text, and PublishingDesk measures a typeface by the full extent of its ink (so Nastaliq is never clipped), which places lines a fraction lower. First make sure the document’s own fonts are installed or packaged beside it. If it persists, nudge the frame’s height up a little in the properties panel.
• An imported InDesign page looks right but text runs through a photo. Text wrap (runaround) isn’t implemented yet for InDesign imports, so text doesn’t step aside for objects. Everything is in its correct position — move or resize the frame to work around it for now.
• A master’s background hides my page’s header. Put the master’s furniture and your page content on different document layers and reorder them.
• The guide toggle (Margins & Guides) shows nothing. The page has no margins/columns/baseline yet — set them in Page → Margins & Guides… first.
• A font I installed doesn’t appear. Use Tools → Install Fonts… rather than copying the file in by hand — its summary tells you if the file wasn’t a font PublishingDesk could read. If you dropped a file into the fonts folder directly, restart the app to pick it up.
• Urdu types as Latin in a search box. Tick the Urdu keyboard checkbox in Find & Replace (or check the keyboard in Tools → Options → Urdu).
• Recovered the wrong/old version? Recovery offers your last autosave; if you’d already saved a newer copy, open that file from File → Open / Open Recent.