User Guide

FontLab 4
320
T e m p l a t e Lay e r
A template is a kind of mask that is font-wide and appears in all Glyph
Windows. You could think of it as an additional global mask.
Template features and operations are very similar to those of a Mask: you
can copy a selected part of any glyph to the template layer; copy a mask to
the template layer; paste the template layer to the outline layer or clean the
template layer.
If the snap-to-template function (View > Snap to layers) is on and the
template layer is visible (View > Show layers), all nodes in all glyphs will
snap to the template.
Commands related to the template layer are concentrated in the Tools >
Template menu:
Copy to Template Copies the selected area of the glyph outline (or the
whole outline if nothing is selected) to the Template
layer
Copy mask to template Copies the mask layer of the current glyph to the
template layer. In other words, converts a local
template into a global, font-wide template.
Paste template to mask Copies the contents of the template layer to the mask
layer of the current glyph
Clear template
Clears the contents of the font template layer.
You can customize the color that is used to render the Template layer using
the Colors dialog box accessible from the Tools > Options > Glyph dialog
box. Refer to the previous section for description of this dialog box.