This issue is applicable to Arabic and Persian languages.

It is very common in Arabic script to stretch single-line words or phrases to a particular width (eg. to match a Latin translation or transcription above or below). This is a behaviour more akin to letter-spacing than to justification (which attempts to align paragraphs of text between margins).

This baseline stretching is achieved by lengthening the connections between letters, and to some extent by use of wide glyph variants, etc. The rules for which part of the text to stretch and how far are complicated - this is not the even spacing that usually occurs in tracked Latin text.

More:

• Arabic script resources, Text spacing
• Arabic Orthography Notes, Text spacing
• Type samples

The GAP

There are currently no mechanisms for managing this process effectively, and automatically in HTML/CSS.

Priority

This is a very common thing to see in Arabic script text, so marking the priority as Basic.

Tests & results

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Action taken

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Outcomes

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