want to specify break location in truncated list description

A lengthy product description is truncated in product lists. You can set the number of characters at which the description is truncated.

Is there something I can insert in the text, a pseudo tag, that will cause the description to break where I want it to, rather than always at 150 characters, or whatever?

In Drupal, this is what we use: <!--break-->.

Is there something like this in Zen Cart, or has someone else made up their own equivalent?

Thanks.

In the upcoming v2.0, the "short description" field is used for that purpose ... you can actually specify the description to be used in the listing.

I believe there's a similar addon available in the Free Addons section that could be used in a like manner.

I have added a single new product to my new Zencart installation, and the entire description shows up (way too long), while test products that were already loaded in the database truncate the description. Have also tried to set the length of Product Description from 150 to 50 or less - but there's no impact. Any ideas? Thanks.

OK - figured out the issue. It appears that if you have only a single product in a category, the full description will be displayed (without truncation, which makes sense). As soon as I added a second product to the category, the descriptions for both products were truncated.

eliko:

OK - figured out the issue. It appears that if you have only a single product in a category, the full description will be displayed (without truncation, which makes sense). As soon as I added a second product to the category, the descriptions for both products were truncated.

That's because if there's only 1 product in a category, the default behavior is to actually open that product's page directly. Thus, there's no reason to truncate, because it's skipping the product-listing page and going directly to the product itself.
If you wish to avoid that, go to Admin->Configuration->Layout->Skip 1-product Categories and turn it off.

Skip 1-prod Categories
Skip single-product categories
If this option is set to True, then if the customer clicks on a link to a category which only contains a single item, then Zen Cart will take them directly to that product-page, rather than present them with another link to click in order to see the product.
Default: True