Hamza position bug with Novel Sans Arabic from Adobe fonts

[ct30677857]

When using Novel Sans Arabic from Adobe fonts in InDesign ME 18.5.4, the characters "lam-alif-hamza above" appear with the hamza sign incorrectly below instead of above. The hamza appears correctly in other Arabic fonts, e.g. Myriad Pro Arabic.

[Eugene Tyson]

Hey Hamza 

Just a heads-up: there’s no “flip hamza above/below” switch in InDesign. Arabic diacritic placement is governed by the font’s OpenType tables (its GPOS/anchor settings etc) - at least that's my understanding, happy to be told otherwise.

Since the same “lam + alif + hamza above” renders correctly in Myriad Pro Arabic, the issue is almost certainly with the Novel Sans Arabic font itself (its diacritic anchor or mark positioning for that sequence is off).

However, here are a few things you can try (no guarantees, but worth checking):

Composer / Language Option
Make sure you’re using the Adobe World-Ready Composer (or the ME / Arabic composer variant) in paragraph/justification settings. InDesign’s Arabic / ME versions expose better OpenType layout support.
Adobe docs say InDesign lets you adjust diacritic positioning (vertical/horizontal) via Character panel > OpenType / Diacritic options. 

Diacritic Adjustment Settings
In the Character panel (or its menu), there are options like “Adjust Horizontal Diacritic Position” and “Adjust Vertical Diacritic Position”. Tweaking those (for the affected text) may force the hamza into the correct spot.

Check for Alternate / OpenType Variants
Sometimes fonts include alternate glyphs / stylistic sets or variants that handle specific combinations (like lam + alif + hamza). See if Novel Sans Arabic has those (in its OpenType / Glyphs panel).

Contact Adobe Fonts / Foundry
Ultimately, since the font is the root suspect, raise a bug / feedback to Adobe Fonts or the foundry (Atlas Fonts). They can fix the anchor data so everyone using it gets the correct form.

[Joel Cherney]

Try changing the value for Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced Type -> Default Composer -> "Enable Legacy Text Shaping for Adobe World-Ready Composer". Some fonts render incorrectly in InDesign when the HarfBuzz character shaping engine is used, and I honestly couldn't tell you if it was a problem with the font, or with HarfBuzz, or the InDesign implementation of HarfBuzz. (This isn't the first time we've seen posting here about incorrect rendering of Novel Sans Arabic, though.)

[Eugene Tyson]

That's the setting I was trying to remember! Thanks! Don't have ME version installed on this machine.