Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-text] Should zero width space break Arabic shaping? (#3861)

Ok, so the conclusion seems to be that this might be surprising if you don't think about it too much, but that people have thought this through, and that ZWS is more like a soft hyphen, and that no breaking shaping is very much intentional, and documented in unicode.

There might be problems in browsers about failing to the do the correct shaping if Zero Width Space is missing from the Arabic font, but that's an implementation matter, not a question about whether ZWS is supposed to break shaping.

So, I was feeling ready to close this with no action, **but…**

It seems that neither MS Word (regardless of font), nor InDesign (regardless of font) nor Firefox (regardless of font) or EdgeHTML (regardless of font) respect that, and they do break shaping on Zero Width Space always. Additionally, whether Chrome breaks shaping or not depends on the font: it shapes with most good Unicode/Arabic fonts, but not with (some?) default system fonts.

Fonts tested: Arial Unicode MS, Segoe UI, Noto Naskh Arabic, Code2000, Adobe Arabic, Calibri.

So, is this a situation where all/most implementation need to get their acts together and get fixed to match the standard, or is the standard fiction that needs to get fixed?

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Received on Monday, 9 September 2019 08:07:24 UTC