Language.java

/**
 * Licensed to The Apereo Foundation under one or more contributor license
 * agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional
 * information regarding copyright ownership.
 *
 *
 * The Apereo Foundation licenses this file to you under the Educational
 * Community 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://opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.txt
 *
 * 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.
 *
 */


package org.opencastproject.matterhorn.search;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Locale;

/**
 * A <code>Language</code> consists of a language identifier, e.g. <code>de</code> to identify the German language, and
 * of the language description in the various supported languages. There is also a connection to the associate
 * <code>Locale</code>.
 * 
 * @see Locale
 */
public interface Language extends Serializable, Comparable<Language> {

  /**
   * Returns the locale that is associated with the language.
   * 
   * @return the locale
   */
  Locale getLocale();

  /**
   * Returns the name of this language in its own language, e.g
   * <ul>
   * <li><code>English</code> for English</li>
   * <li><code>Deutsch</code> for German</li>
   * <li><code>Français</code> for French</li>
   * </ul>
   * 
   * @return the language name in its own language
   */
  String getDescription();

  /**
   * Returns the name of this language in the specified language, e.g given that <code>language</code> was
   * <code>German</code>, this method would return:
   * <ul>
   * <li><code>Englisch</code> for English</li>
   * <li><code>Deutsch</code> for German</li>
   * <li><code>Französisch</code> for French</li>
   * </ul>
   * 
   * @param language
   *          the language version of this language
   * @return the language name in the specified language
   */
  String getDescription(Language language);

  /**
   * Returns the language's identifier, which corresponds to the locales name for this language.
   * 
   * @return the language identifier
   */
  String getIdentifier();

}