A Brief Overview of Starting Complex Text Layout

[rcampbellbassac]

I work in Southeast Asia and am learning font design (starting with Lao). I know that I'm going to have to learn certain fairly advanced things about anchoring and stacking to be able to have a functional font. I walked away with a much better understanding of OpenType, but would love to have a brief overview of what I need to do to anchor tone marks, sub consonants, and the above/below vowels. Is it possible to add a brief overview, without going too deep into details?