I am a bit closer thanks to information gathered here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/7717For example, this is how I changed the symbol used for bullets
1. I defined a logical font “Bullets” in C:\Users\\[username]\AppData\Roaming\SoftQuad\XMetaL Shared\DITA_OT\demo\xmfo\cfg\fo\font-mappings.xml
<logical-font name="Bullets">
<physical-font char-set="default">
<font-face>ZapfDingbats</font-face>
</physical-font>
</logical-font>
2. I inserted a Unicode value for the bullet (a heavy checkmark in this case) in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\SoftQuad\XMetaL Shared\DITA_OT\demo\xmfo\Customization\common\vars\en_US.xml
<variable id="Unordered List bullet">✔</variable>
3. I modified the definition of the attribute set ul.li__label__content in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\SoftQuad\XMetaL Shared\DITA_OT\demo\xmfo\Customization\fo\xsl\custom.xsl
<xsl:attribute-set name="ul.li__label__content">
<xsl:attribute name="font-family">Bullets</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:attribute-set>