On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 7:14 PM Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>
wrote:

>  (Regardless if what's correct, my
> aesthetic impression is that the first display, without m17n and libotf,
> looks better;
>

I believe you are correct. I don't know Lao, but knowing Hindi and
Gujarati, those Lao characters seem similar to the vowel overlays used in
Hindi, Gujarati and other Indic languages.

Example: ક + ં should be rendered combined as કં, ક + ી = કી, and so on.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarati_alphabet#Vowels
-- 

Kaushal Modi