Rule: Use the built-in rules when you can!

There are two built-in template rules:

• This traverses your descendants:

  <xsl:template match="*|/">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:template>

• This copies text to the output:

  <xsl:template match="text()|@*">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:template>

  Note: Attribute text is only copied if you apply templates to an attribute.

• These get dropped from the output:

  <xsl:template match="processing-instruction()|comment()"/>

You get these for free and the processor will do them in an "optimal" way.