Update: Based on our testing (with using conditional text) this issue appears to have been resolved in InDesign 2024 (19.0.0.123 or higher; currently pre-release at the time of my comment). With thanks to the InDesign support team who connected and worked with us on the issue.

As far as my team can tell -- this rendering problem with Arabic text happens whenever there is a U+FEFF (i.e. ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE [BOM, ZWNBSP]) present on the same line as text in which the diacritic rendering is corrupted.

It appear that using things like conditional text, or footnotes etc. leaves a U+FEFF in the Story text. In the case of conditional text, when the condition is enabled (text made visible), then the diacritics render OK again. This appears (to us) to be because the U+FEFF is not longer present in the paragraph text stream (it is not present when the conditional text is visible).

*** This is really a serious bug. *** It makes typesetting Arabic properly nearly impossible with any features like conditional text or footnotes in use. We're currently needing to do massive workarounds to continue our work.

Would someone from Adobe be able to investigate this with us? Please do let us know how we can connect.

Yep. This is still a problem.

@405067513-abhinav-kaushik What's the status on this issue?

I having this problem also. It is totally stopping production. I'll have to revert my software, which means I lose any new functionality.

I've tried to attach a sample .indd document to demonstrate the problem -- but the attachment is not received when I post comment (it is not displayed with the post).

Would there be any update on this issue from Adobe, or anyone?

My team is just facing the same issue. In our case the text we are typesetting has various Conditional Text elements in it. When the conditions are not enabled (the conditional text not visible) then there are various rendering problem with the harakats (diacritics/vowels).

In the attachment I am showing screenshots with lam + alef + hamza + fatha. The text in red is rendering incorrectly. It is using a font called "Scheherazade New" (SIL font - find on Google fonts). With an older version of this font, the rendering is OK (text in green). An additional copy of the characters is show in Adobe Arabic font, which is rendering incorrectly (text also in red).

In the attachment, the image below the red line shows all 3 example rendering OK. In this case the "Conditional Text" in the paragraph has all been made visible.

I think this issue is similar to the others reported here, since it relates to other content being present in the paragraph text (conditional text, footnote reference, anchor) which causes rendering problems.

This is a significant problem. Solutions involving manual intervention are a big challenge for a large amount of text (hundreds of pages).

I am facing the same issue. Its giving a hard time. The moment I anchor an object, harkaats move to next character. Its not even getting controlled by diacritic positioning.

In another scenario where I'm pasting a shape inline after an Arabic word with Diacritics, the same behaviour occurs. Check this video, please…https://youtu.be/F2fE2QqMNn8

I tried inserting a an Anchored object right after the same word, and had this same issue where the diacritics switch places

Any update on this?

Tested this issue with Eduard on Adobe forums and have posted a short video to explain the strange behavior on this post… https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2590473