A Microsoft Word Task Pane Add-in

دل ناداں تجھے ہوا کیا ہے
آخر اس درد کی دوا کیا ہے

— Mirza Ghalib

Set Arabic, Urdu & Persian poetry in Word —
with real kashida justification.

Type couplets into native Word tables, then balance every misra to a single elegant width using canvas-measured tatweel insertion. Built on Ashaar.js.

Install for testing View source ↗

What it does

Typesetting built for the shape of the line.

Poetry in the Arabic script lives or dies by the line. Ashaar gives Word the tools to lay verse out properly — structurally and visually.

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Native Word tables

Couplets become right-to-left Word tables wrapped in tagged content controls — real document structure, not pasted images, fully editable afterwards.

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True kashida justification

A canvas engine binary-searches the maximum tatweels that fit a target width and ranks legal insertion points, balancing all hemistichs to the longest line.

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Flexible layouts

Balanced, equal, compact, and stacked presets — or drop a 12-column grid, reshape cells natively in Word, and capture your own reusable template.

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Paste-and-convert

Mark up verse with \, |, *, and ---, preview it live in the pane, then insert it as a formatted table or tab-stopped paragraphs.

Try it

Sideload the test build in a minute.

The add-in is hosted here on GitHub Pages. Download the manifest, then load it into your copy of Word — no admin install required.

Word on the web
  1. Open a blank document.
  2. Home → Add-ins → More Add-ins.
  3. My Add-ins → Upload My Add-in.
  4. Choose manifest.prod.xml.
Word for Mac
  1. Save the manifest into ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Documents/wef/
  2. Restart Word.
  3. Home → Add-ins dropdown → Shared Folder.
Word for Windows
  1. Put the manifest in a shared folder.
  2. File → Options → Trust Center → Trusted Add-in Catalogs; add the share path.
  3. Restart Word → Home → Add-ins → Shared Folder.
The manifest

Right-click and save manifest.prod.xml, then follow the steps for your platform above.

Download manifest ↓

New to the add-in? Read the User Guide or download the Word version.

Same poetry · different platform

Not working in Word?

This add-in is built on Ashaar.js — the same right-to-left layout and kashida justification engine, as a zero-dependency JavaScript library you can drop into any web page.

Explore Ashaar.js for the web ↗