Column merging is not clear...

Gregg,

I do not want to add this as an issue, because it may just be my bad understanding. Here is what the (new) document says on merging columns:

[[[
When an array of column descriptions B is merged into an original array of column descriptions A, each column description within B is combined into the original array A by:

 • if there is a column description at the same index within A and that column description has the same name, the column description from B is merged into the matching column description in A
 • otherwise, if there is a column description at the same index within A and that column description has a title, is also in A, and the column default language is the same in both A and B, the column description from B is imported into the matching column description in A
 • otherwise, if there is no column description at the same index within A, then the column description is taken from that index of B
 • otherwise, the column description is ignored. A validator must issue a warning if such a column description is encountered.
]]]

I do not really understand the second entry, and I wonder whether there is a misspelling. What does 'is also in A' means? Or should that be 'is also in B', meaning that the same title should appear on both sides? What happens if the title is an array (which can happen)? Does it mean that there should be at least one agreement in a title? Also, if A says:

{
  "@context" : { "@language" : "en" },
  "tableSchema" :
     "columns" : [
        {
           "title" : "my Title"
        }

and B says

{
  "tableSchema" :
     "columns" : [
        {
           "title" : "my Title",
           "name"  : "my-title"
        }

according to these rules you cannot merge the two, because one of the two has a language tag, the other does not. Is it what we want?

I think some clarifications may be necessary...

Ivan


----
Ivan Herman, W3C
Digital Publishing Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704