DOCBOOK-APPS: designing an XSL stylesheet for "pidgin" docbook

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com>]

  i'm following the advice of one of the posters here and designing
an XSL stylesheet that will allow me to write in what i'm calling
"pidgin" docbook, with shortcuts for all of the elements i use,
like <p> for <para>, <em> for <emphasis>, and so on.

  what i'm not clear on is how to write a template for an
element that contains mixed content.  this is what markus
spath posted to help me out:
 
> <xsl:template match="@* | node()">
>    <xsl:copy><xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()" /></xsl:copy>
> </xsl:template>
> 
> <xsl:template match="li">	
>    <listitem><para><xsl:apply-templates /></para></listitem>
> </xsl:template>

obviously, in the case of the "li" element, i want to apply templates
to all of the content, including just copying the text over untouched.
is that what that first template definition is specifying?  that
any non-element content is just copied?

if not, what *would* i use?  obviously, many of the elements can
have mixed content, so i definitely need to be able to specify
this.  thanks.

rday