Zarnegar (word processor)
Zarnegar () is a commercial word processor developed by SinaSoft Corporation. It is specialized for Persian and Arabic languages, and their intricacies. The first version of Zarnegar, which ran on DOS, was released in April 1991. A Windows version was first made available in 2000.

Etymology 
The name, Zarnegar is a double entendre. Literally, it means "what writes with gold"; however, because the two typeface included with the first version of Zarnegar were Zar and Terafik, it can be taken to means "what writes with Zar". After the initial release, however, new fonts were added to Zarnegar every few months, which later became the source of most Persian fonts on Windows systems.

History 
Before Zarnegar, several DOS-based text editors, like Safhe-Ara (), a Persian-enabled Personal Editor 2 (a.k.a. PE2) and Pishkar (, the first product of SinaSoft), were available for basic monospaced desktop publishing only. Zarnegar is the first word processor with specialized support for Persian and Arabic scripts, therefore, establishing new methods of desktop publishing and handling the alphabet in the digital environment.

The main development of Zarnegar happened between 1991 and 1995, with the heaviest work done in 1993 and 1994. In the 1990s, Zarnegar was more popular than the competitors, possibly because of variety and beauty of the bundled fonts, ease of use, and paying attention to market needs, support and education.

Features 
Zarnegar has been a pioneer in Persian desktop publishing with supporting a diverse set of features, some not found in the generic competitors. Notable features are:
 Supporting calligraphy-based and handwriting-based Persian fonts
 Manual kerning for letters and manual positioning of diacritics, explicitly (per word) or as document settings (per font)
 Type setting of math formulas, graphs, tables, and Persian poetry
 Alternate glyphs for letters with UI to select alternates per word, and manage rules to use alternates for line elongation/justification
 Alternate forms for digit zero (of Eastern Arabic numerals): round/diamond and solid/hollow shapes
 Special effects on text—such as shadows with custom angles, background and filling patterns, stroke width and color—with plug-in support for third-party features
 Persian/Arabic justification with advanced options (see following list for details)
 Embedded Persian dictionaries (for various areas, like math, chemistry, physics, geography, proper names, computing, and one for etymology) for spell checking, with possibility of creating new dictionaries to share with other users
 Sorting and collation, per language (Persian/English) or using system language (in Windows, only)
 On-screen measurement of rendered text, in both DOS and Windows versions
 Customizable keyboard layouts (Persian, Arabic and English)
 Embedded phone book with network-based syncing functionality
 Support for import from or exporting to Rich Text Format (RTF), the Microsoft Word format and HTML
 Support for the Iran System encoding
 Predefined (list) counter styles for Persian numerals, Persian alphabet, Persian abjad, Greek numerals, and English alphabet
 PostScript, PDF and EPS outputs, with CMYK support
 Advanced printing options in DOS and Windows versions
 Page layout options for publishing books, manuals and periodicals

Paragraph Justification 

Zarnegar has advanced support for Persian and Arabic paragraph justification, supporting the following options:
 Manual insertion of Kashida character
 Length of Kashida character: short, medium, long, very long
 Length of Whitespace character
 Percentage of letter spacing reduction
 Percentage of using Kashida vs. whitespace character
 Per-word selection of elongation method (where to place Kashida in a word)

Encodings
Zarnegar has employed two different character sets and file formats.

Zarnegar1 Character Set
Zarnegar used an Iran System-based character encoding system, named Zarnegar1, with text file formats for its early versions, up to the Zarnegar 75 version. Zarnegar1 character set is a 2-form left-to-right (visual) encoding, meaning that every Perso-Arabic letter receives different character codes based on its cursive joining form, but most letters receive only 2 forms, because of the limited code-points available2 forms, because of the limited code-points available.

Zarnegar75 Character Set
With Zarnegar 75 version of the program, a new character encoding system was introduced, and the file format was changed to a binary format. Zarnegar75 character set is a 4-form bidirectional visual encoding, meaning that every Perso-Arabic letter receives one, two, or four character code, depending on its cursive joining form, and these letters are stored in the memory in the semantic order.

References

External links 
 

DOS word processors
Windows word processors