Arabic PDF API
Right-to-left layout, Arabic-Indic numerals, HarfBuzz shaping, currency placement — every piece of the MENA stack is built into Kamy. Drop-in HTML → PDF for teams that ship to 400M+ Arabic speakers.
Language coverage
| Language | Direction | Numerals | wkhtmltopdf | Kamy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Arabic (ar) Naskh, Kufi, Diwani | RTL | Arabic-Indic (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩) | Letters isolated; bidi broken | Shaped + bidi correct |
Hebrew (he) Hebrew | RTL | Hindu-Arabic (0123456789) | Direction ignored without manual CSS | RTL inferred from lang attr |
Persian / Farsi (fa) Naskh | RTL | Persian (۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹) | Numerals fall back to Latin | Persian numerals preserved |
Urdu (ur) Naskh in image; Nastaliq via brand-kit upload | RTL | Urdu (۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹) | Nastaliq joining broken even with the font installed | Naskh works out of the box; upload Noto Nastaliq Urdu via brand kit for true Nastaliq |
Pashto (ps) Naskh (Arabic-extended) | RTL | Arabic-Indic | Extra glyphs render as boxes | Full Arabic + Pashto extension support |
Kurdish (ckb) Sorani Arabic-script | RTL | Arabic-Indic | Letters do not join | Sorani-specific letterforms shaped |
Real-world examples
Copy-paste these into your codebase. They render correctly the first time.
Saudi VAT invoice — Arabic
// Saudi VAT invoice — RTL, SAR on the right, Arabic-Indic dates
import Kamy from "@kamydev/sdk";
import { SiteHeader } from "@/components/marketing/site-header";
import { SiteFooter } from "@/components/marketing/site-footer";
const kamy = new Kamy({ apiKey: process.env.KAMY_API_KEY });
await kamy.render({
html: `
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="rtl" lang="ar">
<head>
<style>
body { font-family: 'Noto Naskh Arabic', serif; padding: 40px; }
table { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; }
th, td { padding: 12px; border: 1px solid #ddd; text-align: right; }
.total { font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>فاتورة ضريبية — INV-2026-001</h1>
<p>التاريخ: ٢٤ أبريل ٢٠٢٦</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr><th>الوصف</th><th>الكمية</th><th>السعر</th></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td>اشتراك Pro شهري</td><td>١</td><td>1,250.00 ر.س</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="total">الإجمالي شامل الضريبة: <strong>1,437.50 ر.س</strong></p>
</body>
</html>`,
options: { format: "a4" },
});Israeli receipt — Hebrew
// Israeli receipt — Hebrew RTL, NIS placement
await kamy.render({
html: `
<html dir="rtl" lang="he">
<body style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; padding: 32px;">
<h2>קבלה #4288</h2>
<p>תאריך: 24 באפריל 2026</p>
<ul>
<li>שירות חודשי — ₪199.00</li>
<li>מע"מ (17%) — ₪33.83</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>סך הכל: ₪232.83</strong></p>
</body>
</html>`,
options: { format: "a5" },
});Iranian / Afghan contract — Persian
// Iranian / Afghan contract — Persian numerals + RTL
await kamy.render({
html: `
<html dir="rtl" lang="fa">
<body style="font-family: 'Vazirmatn', sans-serif; padding: 50px;">
<h1>قرارداد ارائه خدمات</h1>
<p>این قرارداد در تاریخ ۲۴ فروردین ۱۴۰۵ منعقد گردید.</p>
<p>مبلغ ماهانه: <strong>۱۲٬۵۰۰٬۰۰۰ ریال</strong></p>
<p>مدت قرارداد: ۱۲ ماه از تاریخ امضاء.</p>
</body>
</html>`,
options: { format: "a4", margin: { top: "2cm", bottom: "2cm" } },
});Five things wkhtmltopdf breaks
01
Symptom
العربية renders as ا ل ع ر ب ي ة (each letter standalone, no joining).
Why it happens
wkhtmltopdf ships an old Qt + Pango stack with HarfBuzz shaping disabled in many builds.
Kamy fix
Kamy uses Chromium's HarfBuzz integration. Initial / medial / final / isolated forms are picked from the font's GSUB table automatically.
02
Symptom
1250.00 SAR inside an Arabic paragraph renders with the currency on the wrong side.
Why it happens
Unicode bidirectional algorithm needs to run per-paragraph, not per-element.
Kamy fix
Kamy applies Unicode UAX #9 bidi resolution at the paragraph level. Currency stays grouped with its number regardless of surrounding direction.
03
Symptom
Pages set to lang='fa' still show 0123456789 instead of ۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹.
Why it happens
wkhtmltopdf doesn't honor the font-feature-settings 'lnum'/'pnum' selectors per locale.
Kamy fix
Kamy preserves whatever numeral system you ship in the HTML. Pass Persian or Arabic-Indic digits and they render exactly.
04
Symptom
An English brand name inside an Arabic line scrambles the entire line's word order.
Why it happens
Naive RTL implementations reverse the whole line instead of running bidi resolution.
Kamy fix
Kamy resolves direction per Unicode bidi run. English, Arabic, and numbers can sit on the same line in any order and render correctly.
05
Symptom
Urdu text with Nastaliq fonts renders as flat Naskh-style letters.
Why it happens
Nastaliq needs OpenType contextual substitution rules (calt, init, medi, fina, liga).
Kamy fix
Upload Noto Nastaliq Urdu (or any TTF / WOFF / WOFF2) via your brand kit — Kamy injects @font-face on every render and Chromium's HarfBuzz pipeline handles the full Nastaliq contextual-substitution chain.
Beyond RTL
Kamy renders via headless Chromium, so any Unicode script with a font available shapes correctly. Major scripts ship in the render image. For niche fonts — Nastaliq Urdu, your corporate typeface, color-emoji variants — upload a TTF / WOFF / WOFF2 once via your brand kit and Kamy injects @font-face on every render.
RTL — verified out of the box
Arabic-script (Naskh, Kufi), Hebrew, Persian, Sorani Kurdish.
Shaping
ICU bidi + HarfBuzz shaping run by default. dir="rtl" auto-detected when ≥1% of letter-bearing chars are RTL.
Font story
Noto Naskh Arabic + Noto Sans Hebrew ship in the render image. Ready today, zero setup.
RTL — calligraphic & niche
Highly contextual scripts requiring OpenType joining substitutions.
Shaping
HarfBuzz contextual substitution (calt, init, medi, fina, liga) runs the full pipeline.
Font story
Naskh-style joining is the default fallback. Upload Noto Nastaliq Urdu, Diwani, or your own font via brand kit — applied to every render.
CJK
Simplified + Traditional Chinese, Japanese (Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana), Korean (Hangul, Hanja).
Shaping
Chromium handles CJK shaping, vertical writing mode (writing-mode: vertical-rl), and ruby annotations.
Font story
Test a sample render against your text first. If glyphs fall back to .notdef boxes, upload Noto Sans CJK or your brand typeface via brand kit.
Indic
Conjunct clusters, half-forms, vowel signs (matras), virama suppression.
Shaping
HarfBuzz Indic shaper handles akhn, half, pstf, vatu, blwf substitutions per script.
Font story
Upload Noto Sans Devanagari / Tamil / Bengali / Gujarati (or your own) via brand kit. Latin parts of mixed-script docs always render correctly.
Southeast Asian
Tone-mark stacking, no-space line-breaking via ICU dictionary segmentation.
Shaping
ICU dictionary-based line breaker runs automatically for Thai / Khmer / Lao paragraphs — no manual word boundaries needed.
Font story
Upload Noto Sans Thai / Lao / Khmer / Myanmar via brand kit for guaranteed glyph coverage.
Custom typography & color
Variable fonts, kerning, ligatures, small-caps, color fonts (COLR/CPAL, SVG-in-OT).
Shaping
Full Chromium font-feature-settings, font-variation-settings, and color-font support.
Font story
Upload your corporate typeface once via brand kit, applied to every render. Or pass theme.fontUrl per render for ad-hoc overrides.
Free tier includes 100 renders / month. Paid plans start at $19/mo with no per-language surcharge — Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu are all on every plan.