&gt; I&#x27;d assume that the text is modified in units more complex than substrings and whitespace splitting?<p>Correct. Each letter in Arabic can have up to four shapes depending on its position in a word: initial, medial, final and isolated[0].<p>Also note that the sample text on the left contains Arabic diacritics[1]. These are usually omitted by native speakers&#x2F;writers since they can be inferred from the context (the only exception I can think of is religious scripture), but they certainly add to the complexity of it all.<p>Needless to say, creating an Arabic mono-font is quite challenging. Kudos to the designer.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arabic_alphabet#Letter_forms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arabic_alphabet#Letter_forms</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arabic_diacritics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arabic_diacritics</a>