Fix Arabic characters copy on a PDF made using InDesign CS

Question

Hi there,
I'm trying to copy some text from a PDF that wast created using InDesign CS. The text is on Arabic, I can read it correctly but when I copy it, it transforms to strange characters. What is confusing is, the latin text can copy correctly!
You can view an extracted page from this PDF here: https://db.tt/XpLvmJE0
Is the error related to the font? or to the old InDesign CS (codenamed Dragontail: October 2003)
Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Resolved!
I got it working with some help from PHP
utf8ToUnicodeCodePoints (I use preg_replace_callback both with ord and json_encode)
remapCodePoints to original code point
then reverse the string to match arabic's rtl
The code:
$str = '»°ù«îÑJ';
echo utf8_strrev( utf8ToUnicodeCodePoints($str) ); // echoes; تبخيسـي
function utf8ToUnicodeCodePoints($str) {
    if (!mb_check_encoding($str, 'UTF-8')) {
        trigger_error('$str is not encoded in UTF-8, I cannot work like this');
        return false;
    return preg_replace_callback('/./u', function ($m) {
        $ord = ord($m[0]);
                    $decoded = '';
                    //if it were ASCII it would only ever return integers up to 127
        if ($ord <= 127) {
            $decoded = remapCodePoints( sprintf('\u%04x', $ord) );
                    // values higher than 127 in a UTF-8 string represent the beginning of a multi-byte character
                    else {
           $json = trim(json_encode($m[0]), '"');
           $decoded = remapCodePoints($json);
                    // Returns something like \u00bb
                    return $decoded;
    }, $str);
// Match code points to new ones
function remapCodePoints($str)
          Total glyfs in AXtSAlwaBold; 108.
$unicode_table = array( '\u03bc'=>'ك','\u03a0'=>'ل',
'\u0020'=>' ', '\u0028'=>')', '\u0029'=>'(', '\u002c'=>'،',
'\u0041'=>'ء', '\u0042'=>'~', '\u0043'=>'', '\u0044'=>'', '\u0045'=>'', '\u0046'=>'ئ', '\u0047'=>'ا', '\u0048'=>'ب', '\u0049'=>'ة', '\u004a'=>'ت',
'\u004b'=>'ث', '\u004c'=>'ج', '\u004d'=>'ح', '\u004e'=>'خ', '\u004f'=>'د',
'\u0051'=>'ر', '\u0052'=>'ز', '\u0053'=>'س', '\u0054'=>'ش', '\u0055'=>'ص', '\u0056'=>'ض', '\u0057'=>'ط', '\u0058'=>'ظ', '\u0059'=>'ع', '\u005a'=>'غ',
'\u0061'=>'ف', '\u0062'=>'ق', '\u0063'=>'ك', '\u0064'=>'ل', '\u0065'=>'م', '\u0066'=>'ن', '\u0067'=>'ه', '\u0068'=>'و', '\u0069'=>'ى', '\u006a'=>'ي',
'\u006e'=>'َ', '\u006f'=>'ُ',
'\u0071'=>'ّ', '\u0072'=>'ْ', '\u0073'=>'َّ', '\u0074'=>'ُّ', '\u0075'=>'ِّ',
'\u00c4'=>'ئ', '\u00c9'=>'ا', '\u00d1'=>'ب', '\u00d6'=>'ب', '\u00dc'=>'ب', '\u00e1'=>'ة', '\u00e0'=>'ت', '\u00e2'=>'ت', '\u00e4'=>'ت', '\u00e3'=>'ث',
'\u00e5'=>'ث', '\u00e7'=>'ث', '\u00e9'=>'ج',
'\u00eb'=>'ح', '\u00ed'=>'ح', '\u00ee'=>'خ', '\u00ef'=>'خ', '\u00f3'=>'د', '\u00f2'=>'ذ', '\u00f4'=>'ر', '\u00f5'=>'ز', '\u00f9'=>'س', '\u00fb'=>'ش',
'\u00fc'=>'ص',
'\u2020'=>'ض', '\u00b0'=>'', '\u00a2'=>'', '\u00a3'=>'ط', '\u00a7'=>'ط', '\u2022'=>'ط', '\u00b6'=>'ظ', '\u00a9'=>'ع', '\u2122'=>'ع', '\u00b4'=>'ع',
'\u00a8'=>'غ', '\u00d8'=>'ف',
'\u221e'=>'ف', '\u00b1'=>'ف', '\u2264'=>'ق', '\u2265'=>'ق', '\u00a5'=>'ق', '\u00b5'=>'ك', '\u2202'=>'ك', '\u2211'=>'ك', '\u220f'=>'ل', '\u03c0'=>'ل',
'\u222b'=>'ل', '\u00aa'=>'م', '\u00ba'=>'م', '\u2126'=>'م', '\u00e6'=>'ن', '\u00f8'=>'ن',
'\u00bf'=>'ن', '\u00a1'=>'ه', '\u00ac'=>'ه', '\u0192'=>'و', '\u2248'=>'ى', '\u00ab'=>'ي', '\u00bb'=>'ي', '\u2026'=>'ي',
'\u2019'=>'لا',
'\u00d3 '=>'لا'
          return $unicode_table[ $str ];
// reverse the direction
function utf8_strrev($str){
    preg_match_all('/./us', $str, $ar);
    return join('',array_reverse($ar[0]));