Converting from windows-1256 to UTF-8 causes punctuation issue

I have an Arabic subtitle that I am trying to convert from SRT to VTT. Subtitles seem to use windows-1256 according to the character encoding detector in ICU (Java). The final VTT file is in UTF-8.

The subtitle converts fine and everything looks correct except for the punctuation steps from the left side to the right side. I am using this subtitle on Chromecast, so at first I thought it was a Chromecast issue, but even gedit on Linux has a problem. LibreOffice has no problem, however. Nor does the console output to IntelliJ.

I wrote a simple piece of code to recreate the problem without actually converting from SRT to VTT by simply converting from windows-1256 to UTF-8.

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
    new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("arabic sub.srt"), "windows-1256")
);
String line = null;
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(
    new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream("bad punctuation.srt"), "UTF-8")
);
while((line = reader.readLine())!= null){
    System.out.println(line);
    writer.write(line);
    writer.write("\r\n");
}
writer.close();
reader = new BufferedReader(
    new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("bad punctuation.srt"), "UTF-8")
);
line = null;

while((line = reader.readLine())!= null){
    System.out.println(line);
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Here is the output from the IntelliJ console:

As you can see, the point is on the left side and I think it is correct.

Here's what gedit shows:

Most of the text on the right is correct, I think, but the period on the right, which I think is incorrect.

Here is LibreOffice:

This is mostly correct, punctuation on the left, however, the text is also on the left, and I think it should be on the right.

These are the subtitles I'm testing https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/5168225/game-of-thrones-fire-and-blood-ar

I also tried another SRT that was originally encoded as UTF-8 and that it worked fine without issue. So my guess is that the conversion issue is from windows-1256.

So what's the problem with how I recode the file?

Thank.

Edit: Forgot the chrome snapshot.

As you can see, the punctuation is on the wrong side.

EDIT: I just noticed that Linux chardet

says it is MacCyrillic

not windows-1256

. But the Java ICU library says windows-1256

. Anyway, if I use MacCyrillic

then the punctuation looks great on gEdit, but the text itself doesn't look like it is now using garbage characters.