| Interface AttributeSet specifies the interface for a set of printing
attributes. A printing attribute is an object whose class implements
interface {@link Attribute Attribute}.
An attribute set contains a group of attribute values,
where duplicate values are not allowed in the set.
Furthermore, each value in an attribute set is
a member of some category, and at most one value in any particular
category is allowed in the set. For an attribute set, the values are {@link
Attribute Attribute} objects, and the categories are {@link java.lang.Class
Class} objects. An attribute's category is the class (or interface) at the
root of the class hierarchy for that kind of attribute. Note that an
attribute object's category may be a superclass of the attribute object's
class rather than the attribute object's class itself. An attribute
object's
category is determined by calling the {@link Attribute#getCategory()
getCategory()} method defined in interface {@link Attribute
Attribute}.
The interfaces of an AttributeSet resemble those of the Java Collections
API's java.util.Map interface, but is more restrictive in the types
it will accept, and combines keys and values into an Attribute.
Attribute sets are used in several places in the Print Service API. In
each context, only certain kinds of attributes are allowed to appear in the
attribute set, as determined by the tagging interfaces which the attribute
class implements -- {@link DocAttribute DocAttribute}, {@link
PrintRequestAttribute PrintRequestAttribute}, {@link PrintJobAttribute
PrintJobAttribute}, and {@link PrintServiceAttribute
PrintServiceAttribute}.
There are four specializations of an attribute set that are restricted to
contain just one of the four kinds of attribute -- {@link DocAttributeSet
DocAttributeSet}, {@link PrintRequestAttributeSet
PrintRequestAttributeSet},
{@link PrintJobAttributeSet PrintJobAttributeSet}, and {@link
PrintServiceAttributeSet PrintServiceAttributeSet}, respectively. Note that
many attribute classes implement more than one tagging interface and so may
appear in more than one context.
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A {@link DocAttributeSet DocAttributeSet}, containing {@link DocAttribute
DocAttribute}s, specifies the characteristics of an individual doc and the
print job settings to be applied to an individual doc.
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A {@link PrintRequestAttributeSet PrintRequestAttributeSet}, containing
{@link PrintRequestAttribute PrintRequestAttribute}s, specifies the
settings
to be applied to a whole print job and to all the docs in the print job.
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A {@link PrintJobAttributeSet PrintJobAttributeSet}, containing {@link
PrintJobAttribute PrintJobAttribute}s, reports the status of a print job.
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A {@link PrintServiceAttributeSet PrintServiceAttributeSet}, containing
{@link PrintServiceAttribute PrintServiceAttribute}s, reports the status of
a Print Service instance.
In some contexts, the client is only allowed to examine an attribute set's
contents but not change them (the set is read-only). In other places, the
client is allowed both to examine and to change an attribute set's contents
(the set is read-write). For a read-only attribute set, calling a mutating
operation throws an UnmodifiableSetException.
The Print Service API provides one implementation of interface
AttributeSet, class {@link HashAttributeSet HashAttributeSet}.
A client can use class {@link
HashAttributeSet HashAttributeSet} or provide its own implementation of
interface AttributeSet. The Print Service API also provides
implementations of interface AttributeSet's subinterfaces -- classes {@link
HashDocAttributeSet HashDocAttributeSet},
{@link HashPrintRequestAttributeSet
HashPrintRequestAttributeSet}, {@link HashPrintJobAttributeSet
HashPrintJobAttributeSet}, and {@link HashPrintServiceAttributeSet
HashPrintServiceAttributeSet}.
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