>     Remember that your <xsl:template/> elements should match
>     fairly generically (match="player" in this case), and
>     your <xsl:apply-templates/> elements should be where you
>     narrow down your selection.
> 
>   I just say that in general, I would give instead the 
> opposite advice.  Of course, there is place for both 
> patterns, and I expect any not-simple-toy-stylesheet to use 
> both.  With experience, when using one or the other become 
> quite obvious.

To me the telltale sign that you've got it wrong is when the body of the
xsl:template rule consists of an xsl:choose instruction.

There are many cases where it really doesn't matter too much. For example,
"process all attributes except width and height" (which came up this
morning) can equally well be written as

<xsl:apply-templates select="@* except (@width, @height)"/>

or as <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/> with

<xsl:template match="@width|@height"/>

There really isn't all that much to choose between them. However, if you're
only processing a very small proportion of the nodes, then selecting the
nodes to be processed in the select attribute of xsl:apply-templates will
probably be more efficient.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/