So, if I say:

  <xsl:template match="//stone">
  ...
  </xsl:template>

  I specify a template for every <stone> element regardless of where it
  appears in the file?  

yes, although

 <xsl:template match="stone">

would match the same elements. It's never useful to start a match
pattern with //.

   Meaning that:

  /stone

  and

  /stone/*/stone

  would activate the same template?  Is that right?


I don't understand this last part. /stone and /stone/*/stone
are very different expressions and woul dselect different nodes in a
select expression and match different nodes if used in a match pattern.

David

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