Right, so I didn't count on a response, tho, I was hoping for one.
I added the strip_tags bit to get better results in the face of image tag content which eats up a characters, and the rest.
I added the strip_tags bit to get better results in the face of image tag content which eats up a characters, and the rest.
I realized that it was significant to get the tags stripped before the length was applied, so that visible text would be fitted into the feed description. That can be achieved only within geeklog. So, without altering the $text value I was able to get what I needed this way,