WriteableRenderedImage is a common interface for objects which contain or can produce image data in the form of Rasters and which can be modified and/or written over. The image data may be stored/produced as a single tile or a regular array of tiles.
WritableRenderedImage provides notification to other interested objects when a tile is checked out for writing (via the getWritableTile method) and when the last writer of a particular tile relinquishes its access (via a call to releaseWritableTile). Additionally, it allows any caller to determine whether any tiles are currently checked out (via hasTileWriters), and to obtain a list of such tiles (via getWritableTileIndices, in the form of a Vector of Point objects).
Objects wishing to be notified of changes in tile writability must implement the TileObserver interface, and are added by a call to addTileObserver. Multiple calls to addTileObserver for the same object will result in multiple notifications. An existing observer may reduce its notifications by calling removeTileObserver; if the observer had no notifications the operation is a no-op.
It is necessary for a WritableRenderedImage to ensure that notifications occur only when the first writer acquires a tile and the last writer releases it.