[xsl] Limit the length of transformed content from source text nodes

[Blue Gecko <bluegecko@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello folks

Is there a way to limit the length of transformed content from source 
text nodes via XSLT?

Here's an example:

<!-- source -->
<foo>
<item>This is the body of an article I'm striving to snip.</item>
</foo>

I need to simulate the shrinking mechanism commonly used in content 
summaries, where the bodies of available articles are snipped to their 
first words followed by ellipsis (...), like this:

<!-- result -->
<snippets>
<snippet>This is the body of [...]</snippet>
</snippets>

Many thanks