Changelog

Version 1.2

Added

• Open InDesign (.idml) documents — File → Open (or File → Import → InDesign) reads the .idml files InDesign exports, and the ones commercial template packs ship alongside their .indd. Every page of every spread arrives with its size, margins, columns and ruler guides; master spreads become master pages (a facing master splits into an L and an R); text frames keep their position, size, rotation, columns, fill and stroke; threaded stories flow from frame to frame in the order InDesign linked them; paragraph and character styles are flattened onto the text (size, weight, italic, colour, tracking, baseline shift, underline, alignment, indents, spacing, leading, tab stops, bullets and numbering); and tables, rectangles, ovals, polygons, curved frames, lines, swatch colours (CMYK, RGB and Lab, with gradients and tints flattened to a solid) and placed images — cropped by their frame the way InDesign crops them — all come across. Import is one-way, exactly as for InPage: the result opens untitled, so Save can never overwrite your original.
• Fonts packaged with a document are loaded automatically. If a Document fonts folder sits beside the .idml, those faces are registered when you open it — so the layout is set in the designer’s own typefaces instead of a substitute, and lines break where they were meant to.

Changed

• One tidy Import menu. File → Import is now a single submenu holding InPage and InDesign at the top, with Text, Autoflow and SVG below, instead of three loose entries scattered through the File menu.
• Documents saved by earlier versions open exactly as before — the .pubdesk format is unchanged and nothing in an existing file is lost or reinterpreted.

Fixed

• An imported vector shape can be recoloured. Selecting a shape brought in from an SVG used to show an empty properties pane — no fill, no stroke, no error. It now gets a full appearance card (object style, fill, stroke colour and stroke thickness), and setting a stroke on a shape that arrived without one gives it a hairline so the change is visible.
• Text no longer clips at the bottom of an imported frame. A frame that came from a design file keeps its own text inset rather than the one PublishingDesk uses for frames you draw — InDesign sizes frames snugly around their text, so the extra padding pushed the last line out of nearly every box and re-broke every paragraph. Frames you drew yourself are unaffected.
• Headings no longer run into the paragraph after them, line spacing set to auto is now worked out per paragraph rather than once per style run, and a paragraph style whose definition names itself slightly differently from the text that applies it still resolves — a missed match used to lose every size, weight and indent the style carried.
• A family is now represented in the font list by its regular weight — a family whose bold file won the pick could set a whole imported document in bold and rewrap every line.
• Objects stack in the order the original author left them (pages were being buried under their own background), two master pages can no longer share a name and quietly collapse into one, and a table’s cells no longer land transposed or empty.

Version 1.1

Added

• Open your InPage (.inp) documents — File → Open (or Import InPage Document) reads an InPage file as a real, editable layout, not a flat picture. Pages, master pages, every frame’s position, size, rotation, columns, border and background come across; linked text still flows box to box; per-word formatting, paragraph settings and tab stops, tables (with merged cells and column widths), pictures, rules and ruler guides all arrive. Import is one-way — the result opens untitled, so Save can never overwrite your original. Files from InPage 2.21 through 2024 are supported.
• Tables — now visible and editable. A new Table menu inserts, edits and deletes a table at the cursor: cell fills, cell text, per-cell borders (including dashed and dotted), column widths and merged cells, drawn identically on screen and in every export.
• Bulleted and numbered lists — set a list and level on a paragraph; numbering counts per level and nests, and numbers use Urdu digits (۱، ۲، ۳) in a right-to-left paragraph. Bullets fall back to drawn discs, rings and squares when a Nastaliq face has no bullet glyph.
• Ruler guides you can place, move and snap to — drag out of the top or left ruler to drop a guide, drag it to move it or off the page to remove it, and objects snap to it. Guides never print or export.
• A Character dialog — decoration (underline, double underline, overline, box, pattern, reverse), letter-spacing, horizontal scale and baseline shift, scoped to the selection or the whole frame; tab stops are now editable in the Paragraph dialog.

Changed

• Sharper printing. Pages now print at the printer’s own resolution instead of a fixed low one, so fine Nastaliq hairlines and thin rules stay crisp — and a printed page no longer looks worse than the PDF export.
• The free-tier badge is redrawn with a light halo so it reads on dark and full-bleed designs instead of sitting on a white box, and it stays easy to delete from a vector PDF.

Fixed

• Colouring or bolding part of an Urdu word no longer breaks its cursive join. Styling half of a joined word used to split it into disconnected pieces; the word is now shaped as a whole and its glyphs divided for drawing, so the letters stay joined — on screen, in every export, and on justified lines.
• A paying customer no longer loses Pro when the Store can’t be reached — the entitlement is remembered, so launching offline keeps your unlocked features and watermark-free export.
• A complex-script frame’s background and border now reach every export (they were previously drawn on screen but dropped from PDF/PNG/SVG/print), and text decorations, horizontal scale and baseline shift are now actually drawn everywhere.
• .pubdesk and .inp documents open by double-clicking them in Explorer, and undoing a Paragraph change now takes a single press.

Version 1.0

Added

• Complex-script (Urdu/Persian/Pashto/Arabic) text — proper Nastaliq shaping with a per-frame language profile and a built-in Urdu keyboard (standard, phonetic Roman→Urdu, or system), with in-place editing and an accurate caret.
• Kashida (kasheeda) justification — justified Urdu/Arabic lines elongate the script’s connecting strokes (tatweel) instead of opening word gaps, on fonts with a real tatweel glyph.
• New-document template gallery — Paper (A-series + US), Social Media, Print and Custom, each with an aspect-accurate preview and a Landscape toggle.
• Multi-page documents & a Pages strip — add / duplicate / delete / reorder / navigate pages, with per-page size, orientation, margins, columns and baseline guides, plus one-click page numbering across all pages.
• Master pages — design repeating headers/footers/page-numbers/borders once and apply any master to the pages you choose, with master chips in the pages strip and an applied-master badge on each thumbnail.
• Layers — text, complex-script text, shapes and images, with a Layers panel (lock, show/hide, drag-to-reorder) and full z-order control.
• Direct manipulation — drag to move, rotation-aware resize handles, an on-canvas rotate handle (Shift snaps to 15°), marquee and multi-select, smart guides & snapping, grid, rulers (px/mm/cm/in), and align & distribute.
• Composable text effects — stackable outline / glow / shadow / inner-shadow / bevel / fill (solid, gradient, chrome) on English and Urdu frames, with a live preset gallery and save-your-own presets.
• Per-layer opacity — an opacity slider on every layer, applied on canvas and in all exports, and remembered with the document.
• Importing — import text into a frame, autoflow long text across as many pages as it needs (threading it through page copies that keep their border/graphics), and import SVG as editable vector shapes.
• Find & Replace across all text frames — Urdu and English, with an in-app Urdu keyboard toggle to find embedded English; matches highlight in their frames.
• Save / Open — a self-contained .pubdesk file (images embedded), with coalesced undo/redo, autosave and crash recovery.
• Export & print — PNG and vector PDF (Urdu preserved as crisp outlines), SVG and print-ready PDF with bleed + crop marks, a Preflight check, and printing of the current page or a range.
• Bring-your-own fonts — a curated set of free Nastaliq/Arabic fonts plus any .ttf/.otf you drop into the user fonts folder (opened from Help), auto-categorised by the scripts they support.
• Properties UX — every numeric field is a unit-aware spinner (steppers, mouse-wheel, arrow nudge, Enter commits), grouped into collapsible, remembered property cards.
• Quality of life — keyboard shortcuts, recent files, per-document zoom, remembered window placement, and an About window showing the version and an auto-incrementing build number.

Free & Pro

• Freemium model — the whole designer is free, with PNG/PDF export carrying a small watermark.
• A one-time Pro upgrade removes the watermark and unlocks PDF for Print (bleed + crop marks), SVG export and Preflight. Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription.

Changed

• A custom icon toolbar with hover states and tooltips, plus matching menu icons, and a contextual format bar that adapts to the selected English or Urdu frame.
• Dark theme softened to a neutral medium-grey (no blue cast); Light remains the default.
• The bundled font set is now redistributable-only (Noto Nastaliq Urdu, Gulzar, Amiri, Scheherazade New, Noto Naskh Arabic, Lateef, Markazi Text, Estedad, Vazirmatn); add your own for anything else.

Fixed

• Autoflow no longer renders blank pages — text now flows correctly onto page 2 and beyond, and any threaded multi-frame layout fills as expected.
• SVG import no longer shows a giant black box — definition/metadata elements are skipped on import.
• Find & Replace no longer crashes on open; the top-bar font/size now apply to a selected English frame; locked layers are fully locked; and page thumbnails number pages 2+ correctly.

Version 0.1.0

Initial Foundation

• A runnable tabbed multi-document editor — each document its own page; open and close documents as tabs.
• Image, text and shape layers from a common base, with direct manipulation on the canvas: drag to move, eight resize handles, click to select, and double-click a text frame to type in place.
• Z-order controls (To Front / Forward / Backward / To Back), a Layers panel, and a Properties panel with per-type editors and a rotation control.