The synthesis of existing fonts with characters represented by parameterized structure elements requires determination of a set of font-specific global and local parameters. Parameters comprise, for example, the widths of vertical stems, horizontal bars and curved elements, the spacing between vertical stems, the relative position of the junction between arches and vertical bars and serif measures. These parameters need to be extracted from existing outline fonts. The paper presents a window based method for locating within existing outline characters the position of character features from which parameters can be measured. The method is based on the match between outline characters and their corresponding virtual skeletons