proposal to explicitly forbid <small> use as subheadings

Hi all,

hixie made a change to the whatwg spec in regards to <small>[1]

<p>The <code>small</code> element must not be used for subheadings; for
that purpose, use the <code>hgroup</code> element.</p>

As you may know changes to the whatwg spec are treated as proposals for
inclusion in the HTML spec, many are included as they are uncontroversial.

Some like the above are not, as the WG needs to be made aware and
discussion needs to take place on the change.

The second part of the sentence can be replaced with "follow the advice on
marking up Subheadings, subtitles, alternative titles and taglines [2]"

but we need to decide if the "must not" requirement on use of <small> is an
appropriate conformance requirement for HTML?

[1] http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7869&to=7870
[2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/common-idioms.html#sub-head
--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>