Changing productname

[Mecmiklo]

Hello,
im trying to change the way virtuemart displays the productname in the product overview.

When the productname exceeds a certain length, virtuemart cuts it off and places the part that is cut of beneath the  first part.
This way the box in which the product is located (class="spacer") gets bigger than the ones with shorter names.
What i want to do is write a small php code that cuts the name to a certain length and then adds three dots at the end.

Example:

"Productnamewhichistoolong will be cut to Productnam..."
Instead of: Productnamewhich
                   istoolong

What i found is the line: <h2><?php echo JHTML::link ($product->link, $product->product_name); ?></h2> 
in /httpdocs/components/com_virtuemart/views/category/tmpl/Default.php

This line produces the productname plus link to the productpage.

Can anyone tell me how i can get that productname plus link within a variable? So i can run it through the code before echoing it to the website.

Or is there maybe another way to do this?

Im using joomla 2.5 with virtuemart 2.0.18a

Thnx.

[jenkinhill]

Hints:  http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=108434  and  http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=111153

[Mecmiklo]

Thnx for the quick reaction.