[ARROW-1789] [Format] Consolidate specification documents and improve clarity for new implementation authors

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.15.0
• Component/s: Format
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/17786
• Assignee: Wes McKinney
• Reporter: Wes McKinney
• Created: 09/Nov/17 23:23
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 07:16
• Resolved: 28/Aug/19 21:02

Description

See discussion in https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/1296

I believe the specification documents Layout.md, Metadata.md, and IPC.md would benefit from being consolidated into a single Markdown document that would be sufficient (along with the Flatbuffers schemas) to create a complete Arrow implementation capable of reading and writing the binary format

Sub-Tasks

• [Format] Create outline and introduction for new document.: Resolved
• [Format] Copy content from Layout.rst to new document.: Resolved
• [Format] Copy content from Metadata.rst to new document.: Resolved
• [Format] copy content from IPC.rst to new document.: Resolved
• [Format] remove individual documents in favor of new document once all content is moved: Resolved