---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
  - ar
task_categories:
  - text-to-image
tags:
  - arabic
  - typography
  - text-rendering
  - internationalization
  - evaluation
  - bidi
  - benchmark
  - rtl
  - arabic-nlp
  - reproducible
  - harfbuzz
  - pillow
  - shaping
  - arabic-reshaper
pretty_name: ArShape
size_categories:
  - n<1K
configs:
  - config_name: results
    data_files:
      - split: test
        path: results.jsonl
---

# ArShape — when does the standard Arabic rendering recipe break Arabic?

**Author:** Syamjith NK
**Write-up:** [The Arabic fix everyone recommends is now the thing breaking your Arabic](https://syamjithnk.com/arabic-text-rendering)
**Companion dataset:** [ArNum-TTS](https://huggingface.co/datasets/syamjithnk/arnum-tts) — the same failure mode in speech.

## The finding

`arabic_reshaper` + `python-bidi` before drawing is the standard advice for rendering
Arabic in Python. On any renderer that already performs complex-text layout it
**corrupts the output**, because the shaping and the bidi reorder both happen twice.

The word is "welcome":

| | rendered as |
|---|---|
| correct (no preprocessing) | مرحبا بكم |
| after reshaper + bidi | مكب ابحرم |

Each string sits alone in its own table cell, because putting them either side of an
arrow on one line lets the bidi algorithm reorder them - which, on a page about Arabic
being silently reordered, is exactly the wrong mistake to make.

Pillow 12 links Raqm/HarfBuzz, so it already does this work. The recipe was correct
when it was written; text stacks caught up and the advice did not.

## Measured

3 Arabic fonts × 5 strings × 4 rendering paths, scored on shape similarity against a
verified-correct reference:

| rendering path | identical | recognisable | broken |
|---|---|---|---|
| modern engine, text as-is | **15** | 0 | 0 |
| modern engine + reshaper + bidi | 0 | 1 | **14** |
| no shaping engine, text as-is | 0 | 0 | **15** |
| no shaping engine + reshaper + bidi | 0 | 9 | 6 |

The last row is the useful nuance: on a renderer without shaping the recipe is a
**partial** rescue. Plain Arabic recovers, but digits, embedded Latin and diacritics
still fail — positioning combining marks and resolving bidirectional runs needs real
shaping regardless of what you pre-process.

## Font coverage trap

Checked against the font `cmap` tables, not by eye: **SF Arabic and Geeza Pro contain
no Latin letters or digits at all.** `في عام 2026` renders the year as `.notdef` boxes
while looking entirely correct to anyone not reading the number. IBM Plex Sans Arabic
has full coverage.

## The practical version

- Check whether your renderer does complex-text layout — in Pillow,
  `PIL.features.check("raqm")`.
- If it does: pass Arabic through untouched. Do not reshape.
- If it does not: reshape, and test digits, Latin and diacritics separately, because
  those will still be wrong.
- Check the font actually contains every character you are about to draw.

## Honesty about method

Two errors, both caught only by looking at the output rather than the score, and both
recorded because they are instructive:

1. **The premise was backwards.** I was confident reshaping was required, so I made it
   the reference the others were scored against — which meant the correct renderings
   scored worst.
2. **The metric compared position as well as shape**, so a visually identical render
   scored zero because two layout engines place glyphs a few pixels apart. Fixed by
   normalising to the ink bounding box, then reporting three bands instead of
   pass/fail — which is what exposed the partial-rescue result above.

A benchmark inherits the assumptions of whoever wrote it. The only reliable way to find
them is to look at the output.

## Reproduce

```sh
python render_bench.py
```

Renders every combination to `out/` and writes `results.jsonl`. Images are not shipped
— they regenerate in seconds and the fonts are system fonts.

<!-- series-block -->
## Does Arabic Survive the Pipeline?

This is one of three reproducible benchmarks, one per stage of a real production pipeline.
Each measures an Arabic failure that looks correct to anyone who does not read Arabic — which
is exactly why it ships.

- [ArNum-TTS](https://huggingface.co/datasets/syamjithnk/arnum-tts) — do numbers survive speech synthesis?
- [ArShape](https://huggingface.co/datasets/syamjithnk/arshape) — does the standard reshaping recipe survive rendering? **→ you are here**
- [ArPDF](https://huggingface.co/datasets/syamjithnk/arpdf) — does Arabic survive a PDF round trip?

All three are CC BY 4.0 and ship the scorer, the raw per-item results, and an explicit
statement of what the measurement does *not* establish.
<!-- series-block -->