The Anchors panel lists every anchor on the active glyph. Anchors are positions used by OpenType layout features and by composite-glyph attachment, where a mark or a continuation glyph needs to land at a known point on its base.
Anchors drive these features:
•Mark-to-Base, Mark-to-Mark, and Mark-to-Ligature lookups — stack a mark glyph on its base.
•Cursive Attachment lookups — chain glyphs through Entry and Exit anchors.
•Caret positions in ligatures — define where a text client can break the ligature for selection or cursor placement.
•Auto Attach and Complete Composites — used when generating composite glyphs from anchored bases and marks.
An anchor in active use by an OpenType lookup carries an arrow icon. An anchor inherited from another glyph through Auto Attach carries a lock icon — inherited anchors cannot be moved or deleted directly.
Move, Add, Delete, Edit
Drag an anchor in the glyph editor to reposition it. Hold Shift for axis-locked movement; hold Alt to bypass snap-to-grid and snap-to-guidelines.
To add an anchor at a specific position, right-click in the glyph editor and choose Add Anchor. The panel toolbar adds a Delete button for the selected anchor and an Edit button (or double-click an entry) to reposition it numerically.
Reorder and Sort
The anchor list can be reordered manually or sorted alphabetically through the panel toolbar.
Create Guidelines from an Anchor
Press G while an anchor is selected in the glyph editor to drop a horizontal and a vertical guideline through it.
Background Layer Anchors
A background layer carries its own anchors, separate from those on the master. Background-layer anchors are listed under the background row in the Masters and Layers panel and are read-only in the glyph editor; swap with the background to edit them.
Set Anchors
Set Anchors (Glyph menu, Ctrl+U) adds the anchors a glyph is missing, placed from its outline; Recalculate Anchors (Ctrl+Shift+U) resets the known ones and adds the missing ones. Anchors with other names are never touched.
Anchors on Smart Layers
A smart layer starts out with every anchor of its glyph, shown read-only in the panel. Edit one while the smart layer is active, by dragging it, through the coordinate box or in the panel, and it becomes an anchor of that layer: the pole for that end of the smart axis, so the anchor moves with the shape as the axis is dialled. An anchor can also be added on a smart layer alone. Delete on a smart-layer anchor does not remove it from the glyph; it reverts to the inherited value. See Smart Components.
Show and Lock
View > Show Anchors and View > Lock Anchors are preferences: the choice is kept between sessions and applies to every font you open.
Anchor Manager
Open the Anchor Manager from the panel toolbar to add, delete, or modify the anchor classes the font uses.
Tip: use Complete Composites Anchor Based to generate composite glyphs from anchored bases and marks automatically.
