[whatwg] Headings and sections, role of H2-H6

[Nikita Popov]

On 30.04.2010 16:11, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
> On 4/30/10 8:02 AM, Nikita Popov wrote:
>> I personally prefer using <h1-6> and do not see, why always using <h1>
>> may be better.
>
> If you're the only author, sure (maybe; see below).
>
> If you're one of several co-authors on a document, with sectioning 
> structure in flux, and you're supposed to produce one of the sections 
> but don't know how deeply nested your section will be in the final 
> document, then how are you supposed to use <h1-6> correctly?
Yeah, I see.
>
>> What would make much more sense, is to omit the rank fully, so only only
>> has to write <h>.
>
> Yes, and I'm fairly certain that's been discussed in the past.  But 
> <h1> already exists, and people already use it and the new uses will 
> degrade gracefully in UAs not supporting the new spec text much better 
> than uses of <h> would.
I don't know whether I would be happy, if all headings in my document 
were shown *BIG*, 'cause I use h1 everywhere. I would much more 
appreciate them to be unstyled. (But this is only personal opinion.)
>
>> Beyond that, using <h> instead of <h1> would even be more backwards
>> compatible to the HTML 4 use of headings.
>
> But not to existing HTML4 UAs...
As said above, I think it increases backwards compatibility by omitting 
all styles. But it depends on the case whether it's better to have only 
big titles or only unstyled titles.

I easily think that using h1 everywhere isn't semantically correct. 
Especially if the subsections (with their h1s) cannot be redistributed 
solely it does not make any sense.

<h> would mark up a heading, <h1> does mark up an heading of highest rank.

But maybe you are right. The html5 spec is already blown up with stuff 
nobody will ever use (keygen?) enough. In this case less is probably more.