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Viewing Farsi on this site

If this isn't the word Farsi: فارسی, in Farsi then your computer probably doesn't have a Farsi Unicode font installed and you will have problems reading Farsi text on this site.

Following are instructions for getting Farsi Unicode to display properly on various computer operating systems.

Unicode

This site uses Unicode (UTF-8) encoding throughout to enable multiple character sets to be displayed on the same page. If your browser or system has the ability to automaticallt detect the page encoding then it should siplay fine if you have the correct fonts installed. If you have overrriden the autodetect and instructed your browser to always use a particular encoding (say ISO-8859-1) then the non-latin script on this site will not display until you either set it to UTF8 or automatic.

Microsoft Windows

Windows XP and Windows 2000

The best Microsoft font for Farsi is the Tahoma font which is shipped with Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Microsoft Office 2000 and Microsoft Office XP

If you have a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 or Microsoft Office XP, or Microsoft Publisher 2002, and Farsi is not displaying properly then you can install the Arial Unicode MS font which is distributed by Microsoft with these products.

If you are unsure how to install Arial Unicode MS from CD then follow these instructions for installing Arial Unicode MS.

Alternatively, please consult the Microsoft Help and Support website — try searching for "Arial Unicode".

Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows NT 4.0

Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows NT 4.0 are not distributed with the Tahoma font or the Arial Unicode MS font, so you will need to install an alternative Farsi font.

Nesf is a Unicode font based on Nimrooz, suitable for Farsi web pages. To install it please download the font here:

nesf font

To install the font, use the font utility in the Control Panel. There are more detailed instructions on our installing fonts page. Alternatively, simply copy the .ttf file into your Windows \fonts directory.

Nesf is a font by Mehran Mehr and is made available as part of the The FarsiWeb Project.

Upgrading Internet Explorer

If you have installed the font and it is still not displaying properly this might be because you have an old version of Internet Explorer, if you are using a version older than version 5.5 then you will need to update it. To find out which version you are using select Help, About Internet Explorer.

The easiest way to upgrade is to use the Windows Update icon in your start menu, alternatively you could go straight to the Windows Update Website or you could go straight to the Internet Explorer Downloads Web site.

Farsi letter Yeh

There are well known problems with the Farsi letter Yeh on Windows systems. In the first version of the keyboard layout in Windows 2000 it was not possible to type the Farsi letter Yeh: it typed the Arabic version instead. Also, in the first version of the fonts the letter Yeh would not combine correctly when used in the middle of a word.

Most problems were corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 2.

You can find more information and help about the Farsi letter Yeh at the Persian Word Processing website and on the Open Road support site.

Mozilla Firefox under Windows

You don't need to modify Mozilla Firefox configuration or download a plugin to display webpages or emails written in Farsi but you will need to ensure that Windows can display Farsi text using the guides above.

Mac OS X

Farsi is supported out-of-the-box in Mac OS X v10.2.4, but problems have been reported using Internet Explorer v5.2.2. Try using Apple's KDE-based browser Safari.

Further help is available from the Iranian Mac User Group http://www.irmug.org/

GNU/Linux

Most GNU/Linux distributions come with packages for Farsi fonts/support. Here we list some of the packages available but you are best to use your regular package manager and search for "farsi font", then install the relevant package.
Debian
Install the ttf-farsiweb package.
Ubuntu & related

Ubuntu already comes with Farsi fonts preinstalled but if your does not you should be able to install the ttf-farsiweb package

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