Arabic ePub Issue from InDesign

[Ahmad Sleem]

Hello All,

The one on Left side is how it looks as ePub, InDesign is on the right side. Any idea how can I fix this?

I am using InDesign 2019 on Windows, there is no overriddes and everythign is styles... also I am using Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer for the justification composer. Tried to change the fonts and Ligatures is Disabled.

Any Ideas? Thanks

[David Popham]

Have you tried using a different EPUB reader to see what the results are? Some may not have the same level of support for RTL languages. Also, what font are you using, and are you embedding the font in the EPUB?

[Ahmad Sleem]

Hey David,
Yes I have tried different epub readers and all exactly same result, I even extracted the ePub to check the HTML itself and it is still broken. font is Adobe Arabic.

Regarding the font embedding, doesn’t InDesign do this Automatically?

[Adnan99]

Hi Ahmed, I'm having a similar problem, and I'm relatively new on InDesign. Did you solve yours?

[Ahmad Sleem]

unfortunately not yet

[BobLevine]

Try InDesign 2020 and beyond the Books app on iOS and Mac, fixed layout is really not a good format.

[Adnan99]

Hi Bob - Thanks for the suggestions: I've already got InDesign 2020, and I just searched the App store for "Beyond" but didn't find any books' app.

The book I'm trying to release looks super as a fixed layout ePub, except for this little Arabic problem.

[BobLevine]

The Books app is preinstalled with iOS and Mac OS. There's nothing to look for. It used to be called iBooks.

[Adnan99]

Already viewing the ePub in Books.

I have now attached screenshots of the inDesign and ePub views. 

[Ahmad Sleem]

Fixed layout is what the clients need 😞

[Adnan99]

Maybe type it out in AI and place that in your InDesign file and export.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

I don't usually output to ePub unless it is for demo purposes, hence I'm not an expert on this topic. having said that, I was successfully able to output below on Mac (Catalina), InDesign 2020, using "Adobe Arabic" font, I put together a 4 pages Arabic article and output it to ePub reflowable, the result was satisfactory when viewed on Apple "Books" viewer.

Can you simplify your publication for the sake of testing, remove any images, borders, and keep text only, perhaps one page.

[Ahmad Sleem]

Thank you Zaid,

But the issue is with the Fixed Layout

[Ahmad Sleem]

Now I am using the Latest Adobe InDesign 2020 15.1.1

[Zaid Al Hilali]

It is happening with me too. I cannot publish Arabic contnet properly as I used to do with Fixed-Layout option!

[Ahmad Sleem]

I think it has something to do with new InDesign maybe? But for me it has been always the case even with any previous InDesign

[Arnold_Rodrigues]

The 'solution' is not to get the latest version of indesign but rather an older version. Specifically, Indesign CC2018. I think it has something to do with the way fonts are treated while exporting to the fixed layout format. When working with Arabic, however, you'll end up with issues in the way punctuation appears in the layout. It would be faster to outline the text and re-build any interactivity or MSOs. I'd be interested to find out if anyone has any other solutions for this.

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about this trouble. We are currently investigating this issue. Will it be possible for you to share a sample file? You can upload it to the Creative Cloud (https://helpx.adobe.com/in/creative-cloud/help/share.html) and share the download link. 

Also, could you please try opening Epub file in some other reader like Readium. Let us know if this helps or the issue still persists.

Regards,

Srishti

[Ahmad Sleem]

Hey Srishti,

Thanks for replying to this...

Yeah I have tried different readers including readium and still same issue, here you can find a sample

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/21a92893-1789-408e-6ab3-93a2e7aa4286

Thank you in advance

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Hi Ahmad,

This issue has been reported to Adobe as a bug, you may vote to grab InDesign's development team attention to this matter here… https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/41322403-arabic-exporte...

[Ahmad Sleem]

Hey Zaid,

I just did voting this up 🙂

[foaad61]

I am having the same issue with a 67 page Farsi book. The print is fine and I successfully created a reflowable ePub with some issues like footnote numbering. However, I just uninstalled and are-installed 2022 version 17.01 and I cannot create a fixed ePub in Farsi. This has been an issue since 2018 and the Adobe Indesign team has not found a solution or a workaround???

I appreciate any solutions? 

[Willi Adelberger]

As far as I know there are aome limitations to RTL (ARABIC, FARSI, HEBREW) exports with EPUB and PDF.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

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@Willi Adelberger wrote:

As far as I know there are aome limitations to RTL (ARABIC, FARSI, HEBREW) exports with EPUB and PDF.

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It is totally true with EPUB, however, Exporting to PDF is stable and smooth from my experience. Did someone report an issue when exporting Arabic content to PDF?