/*
 * This file is part of the LibreOffice project.
 *
 * This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
 * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
 * file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
 *
 * This file incorporates work covered by the following license notice:
 *
 *   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 .
 */

package org.openoffice.xmerge.merger;

import org.openoffice.xmerge.MergeException;

/**
 * This is the {@code MergeAlgorithm} interface.
 *
 * <p>It is an interface so that different merge algorithms may be plugged-in
 * to actually merge the diffs back to an original document.</p>
 */
public interface MergeAlgorithm {

    /**
     * This method is to merge the difference to an {@code Iterator}.
     *
     * <p>The original {@code Iterator} will be modified after the call.</p>
     *
     * @param   orgSeq       The original sequence which the difference will be
     *                       applied.  It will be modified.
     * @param   modSeq       The modified sequence where the difference content
     *                       will be extracted.
     * @param   differences  The {@code Difference} array.
     *
     * @throws  MergeException  If an error occurs during the merge.
     */
    void applyDifference(Iterator orgSeq, Iterator modSeq,
                         Difference[] differences) throws MergeException;
}