EPUB 3 - Mixed Bidirectional Runs
Left-to-right prose with an Arabic run isolated by dir="rtl" and a Latin identifier isolated by dir="ltr" inside an Arabic phrase. The everyday bidi case that breaks when a renderer applies paragraph direction to every character in the paragraph.
- mimetype
- container.xml
- content.opf
- nav.xhtml
- style.css
- chapter1.xhtml
Specifications
- Seed
- 20260807
- Epub Version
- 3.0
- Language
- en
- Page Progression Direction
- ltr
- Bidi Isolation
- dir attributes on inline spans
- Scripts
- Latin + Arabic
Testing contract
Expected to pass- Scenario
- Render the chapter and read the invoice number and the Arabic run in place.
- Expected result
- Each isolated run keeps its own direction, the invoice number reads INV-2026-0043 left to right, and neither run reorders the text around it.
What is a .epub file?
EPUB is the open e-book standard, a ZIP archive containing XHTML content documents, CSS, images, and a package manifest describing reading order and metadata. It supports reflowable text that adapts to screen size and is supported by most e-readers except Kindle natively. It is the dominant format for distributable e-books.
How to use this file
Use an example EPUB to test e-book parsing, ZIP-package and manifest handling, reading-order and metadata extraction, and rendering in e-reader applications.
How to use this file for testing
“EPUB 3 - Mixed Bidirectional Runs” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Internationalization, Conversion testing. Parallel text and accented, multi-script content — for testing translation pipelines, Unicode handling, and localization tooling.
Documented properties for this file: seed 20260807 · en. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
E-book fixtures are structured archives documented down to their spine and manifest. Test readers and converters, and where a valid↔intentionally-invalid pair exists, assert graceful handling of the malformed container.
Load the catalog with your i18n framework and verify placeholder interpolation and plural handling; the RTL and CJK variants exercise bidirectional text and font fallback.
Code examples
ebook-convert mixed-bidi.epub out.pdf # Calibre
unzip -l mixed-bidi.epub # EPUB is a ZIPRelated files
- xmlJUnit XML — Non-ASCII Test Names (UTF-8)Test names in German, French, Japanese, Greek and Russian, stored as UTF-8 with no BOM and an explicit encoding declaration. A reporter that assumes the platform default encoding produces mojibake here rather than an error.
- ttfTTF — Composite Glyphs (accents built from components)Four precomposed accented letters built the way real fonts build them — as composite glyphs referencing a base letter and a combining mark with a translation. For testing component resolution, nested-glyph handling, and subsetters that must keep a component's base glyph alive. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Localised Forms (locl) for Turkish and RomanianLanguage-specific substitution through locl: tagging text as Turkish swaps the i, tagging it as Romanian swaps the S, and untagged text gets neither. The fixture for finding out whether your pipeline propagates a language tag from the document all the way to the shaper. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Mark Attachment (mark and mkmk) with GDEFMark-to-base and mark-to-mark positioning with a real GDEF glyph-class definition: three zero-width combining accents attach to ten base letters at documented anchors, and stacking a second mark uses the mkmk anchor. For testing diacritic placement without needing a full Unicode face. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Vertical Writing Metrics (vhea and vmtx)A horizontal Latin face that also carries vhea and vmtx, so vertical-layout code has something small and predictable to run against: every glyph advances 1000 units downward with a 250-unit top side bearing. For testing writing-mode support and metric-table selection without needing a CJK font. Original typeface, free to use.
- azw3AZW3 — Kindle KF8 E-bookThe valid EPUB converted to AZW3 (Kindle KF8) with Calibre — the modern Kindle format. For testing AZW3 readers and EPUB→AZW3 conversion.
Generated by generation/ebooks_p7.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.