revisiting heading advice

Currently the spec  says its OK to use all h1's in a document or all (h6's)
for that matter as the heading rank is derived from the nesting level of a
heading within sections, not from the numerical value in the elements name.

Unfortunately while the above may be true in theory its not true in
practice.

The current text in the spec can lead to authors creating  flat document
outlines:

"Sections may contain headings of any rank, and authors are strongly
encouraged to use headings of the appropriate rank for the section's
nesting level."
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#headings-and-sections

I am thinking that it may be better to have a normative requirement on
authors:

"Authors SHOULD use headings of the appropriate rank for the section's
nesting level."


what do other people think?


--

Regards

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