/*
 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 *  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 *  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 *  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 *  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 *  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  limitations under the License.
 */
/**
 * @author Rustem V. Rafikov
 * @version $Revision: 1.3 $
 */
package javax.imageio;

import javax.imageio.metadata.IIOMetadata;
import javax.imageio.ImageTypeSpecifier;

/**
 * The ImageTranscoder interface is to be implemented by classes that
 * perform image transcoding operations, that is, take images written
 * in one format and write them in another format using
 * read/write operations. Some image data can be lost in such processes.
 * The ImageTranscoder interface converts metadata objects (IIOMetadata)
 * of ImageReader to apropriate metadata object for ImageWriter.
 */
public interface ImageTranscoder {
    
    /**
     * Converts the specified IIOMetadata object using the specified
     * ImageWriteParam for obtaining writer's metadata structure.
     * 
     * @param inData the IIOMetadata.
     * @param param the ImageWriteParam.
     * 
     * @return the IIOMetadata, or null.
     */
    IIOMetadata convertStreamMetadata(IIOMetadata inData, ImageWriteParam param);

    /**
     * Converts the specified IIOMetadata object using the specified
     * ImageWriteParam for obtaining writer's metadata structure 
     * and ImageTypeSpecifier object for obtaining the layout and 
     * color information of the image for this metadata.
     * 
     * @param inData the IIOMetadata.
     * @param imageType the ImageTypeSpecifier.
     * @param param the ImageWriteParam.
     * 
     * @return the IIOMetadata, or null.
     */
    IIOMetadata convertImageMetadata(IIOMetadata inData, ImageTypeSpecifier imageType, ImageWriteParam param);
}