Diacritics in the Arabic language

[ahmad mukhtar30273578booe]

Problem:
I'm working on an Arabic educational book using Adobe InDesign. The Arabic text includes full diacritics (tashkeel), and everything looks perfectly aligned inside text frames that are placed within decorative shapes.
However, once I export the file to PDF, the diacritics become misaligned — especially when the text is inside shapes or grouped with other design elements.

I've already tried the following:

Enabled Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer

Used supported Arabic fonts (like Adobe Arabic and Amiri)

Ensured Right-to-Left paragraph direction

Disabled Text Wrap

Tried "Fit Frame to Content" and reset text frame options (zero inset spacing)

Exported using "Embed All Fonts" and PDF/X-4 preset

Yet the issue persists: the diacritics shift or appear outside their intended positions when viewed in the exported PDF.

:white_heavy_check_mark: Text appears correctly inside InDesign
:cross_mark: But gets distorted or misaligned in the final PDF

How can I preserve diacritic positioning exactly as shown in InDesign when exporting to PDF?
Any help would be appreciated!

[Anubhav M]

Hello @ahmad mukhtar30273578booe,

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with InDesign. Would you mind installing the Arabic/Hebrew version of InDesign(https://adobe.ly/4fnw22s) to see if it helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[ahmad mukhtar30273578booe]

The version I have installed is English Arabic

[Joel Cherney]

There are actually a few threads here  reporting this issue, and similar issues with right to left languages, broadly speaking. You might try turning on the Legacy Character Shaping Engine in the Preferences - or turning it off, if it is already on. Another workaround that might get you something that you can export would be to make sure that the last character in every paragraph, and every story, is not an Arabic character. If you don't already know how, I can give you a find/change query that will append a space at the end of every paragraph. If that PDF exports correctly, then you have experienced the same bug that is reported here.

[ahmad mukhtar30273578booe]

I designed a book and I want a complete and simple solution. I understood from you that a Latin character should be placed at the end of each text frame containing Arabic text, but this is a tedious task. This issue should be solved programmatically if it is a software bug.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @ahmad mukhtar30273578booe,

Thanks again for detailing the issue you're seeing with diacritics shifting in your exported PDFs. Just wanted to check if what you're experiencing resembles another known case where diacritics were actually omitted when exporting Arabic or Persian text from InDesign. Here's the thread we noticed: Diacritics omitted in Arabic‑Persian text when exporting to PDF in InDesign 19.5

If this sounds similar, try the suggestions on that thread and see if it helps.  

Looking forward to hearing how it goes!

Abhishek

[ahmad mukhtar30273578booe]

Thank you all for engaging with me on this issue.

I’ve tried all the suggested methods and workarounds, but unfortunately none of them worked. This is really disappointing, as I’m working on a book that I need to export as a PDF, and I keep facing this problem.

For reference, I’m using InDesign version 20.5.

Would installing an older version of the software help resolve this issue?

[ahmad mukhtar30273578booe]

I tried and nothing worked

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @ahmad mukhtar30273578booe,

Please check this thread: https://adobe.ly/3UvRdrs and see the latest pinned reply.

The update mentions that the product team is working on a permanent fix and will share more details soon.

I will keep you posted with the updates. 

Abhishek