15. Writing a Template Assistant : How You Can Ensure Compatibility Between the Assistant and ApplyTemplate : How the Field Creation Process Works
 
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How the Field Creation Process Works
From OpenROAD Workbench's Frame Editor, you can specify that a field be created from a field template. When a field is created from a field template, the following steps are performed:
The field template specified by the user is fetched from its library image file.
All of the static functionality defined for the field template—in the form of a 4GL field script and any visual characteristics—is copied to the newly created field.
If an assistant has been defined for the field template, the assistant is then called and is passed the newly created field for dynamic customization.
The static functionality provided by the field template and the dynamic functionality provided by the assistant combine to create a field that is immediately unique and usable. The ApplyTemplate is a mechanism to perform these three steps on fields that have already been created.