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Including sections without Hx leads to illogical outline depths for headings http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#outline-depth example: <body> <h1>heading</h1> <section> <section> <section> <h1>heading</h1> </section> </section> </section> results in <h1> <h4> </body> given that use of sectioning elements in the wild are prone to this type of misuse, ignoring sections without headings seems prudent.
some data 252 HTML5 pages using the <section> element http://www.html5accessibility.com/HTML5data/section/section.html
some data: 170 HTML5 pages that use the <article> element http://www.html5accessibility.com/HTML5data/article/index.html
modify outline depth concept to allow empty sections to be ignored when calculating outline depth and consequent acc layer level property current text: "The outline depth of a heading content element associated with a section section is the number of sections that are ancestors of section in the outermost outline that section finds itself in when the outlines of its Document's elements are created, plus 1. The outline depth of a heading content element not associated with a section is 1." http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#outline-depth
(In reply to steve faulkner from comment #3) > modify outline depth concept to allow empty sections to be ignored when > calculating outline depth and consequent acc layer level property > > current text: > "The outline depth of a heading content element associated with a section > section is the number of sections that are ancestors of section in the > outermost outline that section finds itself in when the outlines of its > Document's elements are created, plus 1. The outline depth of a heading > content element not associated with a section is 1." > > http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#outline-depth also need to modify "User agents should provide default headings for sections that do not have explicit section headings."
after discussion last year with hixie decided not a good idea