Diacritic Positioning and Ligatures in Adobe Naskh Typeface for Arabic Script in InDesign CS6

[A2D2]

Hi,

I am using the Adobe Naskh typeface for setting Arabic script in InDesign CS6 (v.8.0). I am getting instances of the dots being positioned incorrectly.

This is how the script should appear...

The issue can be resolved with the following: by turning off ligatures but this is NOT an acceptable solution because one of the beauties of Adobe Naskh is its use of ligatures.

The position of the dots can also be changed in the language support plugin i.e. changing diacritc position from OpenType to Normal but the positioning becomes even worse!

I am having problems recreating the issue and so I do not know why it is occuring. Things I have tried:

• retyping the text
• redefining the paragraph style from scratch and removing dependencies on other styles
• removing overrides and character styles
• pasting text into a new document
• removing Latin glyphs 
• removing punctuation glyphs (e.g. apostrophe, quotation mark, guillmot)
• removing footnote markers
• changing paragraph and character directions
• changing justification type (left, right, full justify...) (standard, Arabic, Naskh)
• setting language in Advanced Character Format
• increasing leading to give more space on the line
• changing kerning method (metrics, optical, none)

So, my best guess is that for some reason the Arabic script rendering engine is trying to compress the script by shifting Open Type diacritics in order to justify the text but when the justification conditions change the engine cannot be always "shaken" into re-rendering the text.  I don't know if this theory at all makes sense. Just a guess!

If anybody can throw any light on this problem I would be grateful. Perhaps it is the plugin? Has anybody come accross this problem with different plugins e.g. World Tools, ScribeDOOR? How about in InDesign CC? How about with different typefaces or different languages?

<Title renamed by MOD>

[Zaid Al Hilali]

I'm not sure if you're reporting a bug, or asking for help to sort out a ten years old InDesign CS6? InDesign 2024 doesn't have the problem you're describing.

Here is a screenshot from Id. v. 19.5…

My guess is the font you're using isn't compatible with Id CS6. Use another font such as Arial for testing.

[A2D2]

Yes, InDesign CS6 is old now, fair point, but as you know a lot of the things do not get updated so I am not sure it is a problem with an old plugin.

Adobe Naskh came packaged with the software so it should be compatable.

If you cannot recreate the problem that is good but it does not really speak to my point because I cannot reliably recreate the problem either! That is the point! Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't so I am trying to understand what the text engine is doing.

I don't know if this is related but when using the same Latin font sometimes I can format "Open Type All Caps" and sometimes it does not work. The font has small caps but sometimes the open type feature is not working ... maybe I have a problem working with Open Type features generally?

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Are you using the Middle Eastern version of InDesign?

[A2D2]

No

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Then for sure you will not get a decent Right-to-left controls. At the time when Adobe used to sell CS6 and prior, we had to install the Middle Eastern version which used to come on a separate DVD, so it is not a matter of additional plug-in that you can download now for example.

[A2D2]

I found a post where the user was using a Hebrew font and experiencing poor dot positioning ... apparently because of problems using composite fonts.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/fonts-opentype-features-not-working-in-composite... 

But I am not using a composite font. Just meant to say that strange things can happen in InDesign.

Also, I do not think the problem is due to not using the ME version and the Western version + plugin generally works fine.