--- /dev/null
+package jalview.datamodel;
+
+import java.util.BitSet;
+import java.util.List;
+
+/**
+ * An interface describing the result of a search or other operation which
+ * highlights matched regions of an alignment
+ */
+public interface SearchResultsI
+{
+
+ /**
+ * Adds one region to the results
+ *
+ * @param seq
+ * Sequence
+ * @param start
+ * int
+ * @param end
+ * int
+ * @return
+ */
+ SearchResultMatchI addResult(SequenceI seq, int start, int end);
+
+ /**
+ * Answers true if the search results include the given sequence (or its
+ * dataset sequence), else false
+ *
+ * @param sequence
+ * @return
+ */
+ boolean involvesSequence(SequenceI sequence);
+
+ /**
+ * Returns an array of [from, to, from, to..] matched columns (base 0) between
+ * the given start and end columns of the given sequence. Returns null if no
+ * matches overlap the specified region.
+ * <p>
+ * Implementations should provide an optimised method to return locations to
+ * highlight on a visible portion of an alignment.
+ *
+ * @param sequence
+ * @param start
+ * first column of range (base 0, inclusive)
+ * @param end
+ * last column of range base 0, inclusive)
+ * @return int[]
+ */
+ int[] getResults(SequenceI sequence, int start, int end);
+
+ /**
+ * Returns the number of matches found
+ *
+ * @return
+ */
+ int getSize();
+
+ /**
+ * Returns true if no search result matches are held.
+ *
+ * @return
+ */
+ boolean isEmpty();
+
+ /**
+ * Returns the list of matches.
+ *
+ * @return
+ */
+ List<SearchResultMatchI> getResults();
+
+ /**
+ * Set bits in a bitfield for all columns in the given sequence collection
+ * that are highlighted
+ *
+ * @param sqcol
+ * the set of sequences to search for highlighted regions
+ * @param bs
+ * bitset to set
+ * @return number of bits set
+ */
+ int markColumns(SequenceCollectionI sqcol, BitSet bs);
+}
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