RSS Display Character limit

[tspore]

1) Script Title: Rss Display Boxes

2) Script URL (on DD):
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex18/rssdisplaybox/index.htm

3) Describe problem:
How can I limit the number of characters that the RSS feed shows on my Home page. Basically right now it shows the entire RSS feed, but I would like it to show only 500 characters or so. (I also would not like to break HTML or images/URL's)
So the Simple pie method I found broke HTML.

Any other ideas?

Thanks
Tony

[tspore]

Second question, how do I add a read more.... with the URL back to the original article?