com.tensegrity.graphics
Interface Format

All Known Implementing Classes:

FontFormat, MarkerFormat, PaintFormat, StrokeFormat

public interface Format

The Format interface defines the basic behaviour for Format implementations. Basically this interface is a simple marker interface, to be able to treat all available formats similar. Beside that this interface forces implementations to implement a canonical description, which can be used to compare formats. The toString() method is used for tracing purpose.

Version:

$Id: Format.java,v 1.3 2004/06/24 12:24:14 AndreasEbbert Exp $

Author:

GillesIachelini

Method Summary

java.lang.String	getCanonicalDescription() Returns the canonical description of a Format.
java.lang.String	toString() Returns a String that represent the Format and all of the attributes of it.

Method Detail

getCanonicalDescription

public java.lang.String getCanonicalDescription()

Returns the canonical description of a Format. For instance this description is used for the pooling of Formats. It can also be used to compare two instances of a Format.

Returns:

the canonical description of a Format

toString

public java.lang.String toString()

Returns a String that represent the Format and all of the attributes of it. For instance this representation can be used for tracing purposes and such.

Returns:

the textual representation of the Format