Item Description Length

How can I increase the default length of the description of a collection (it is too short) in the list of collections? The same applies when I browse items. Can I increase those short descriptions?

That can be done by digging into the theme files. The descriptions appear with functions like this

<?php echo nls2p(collection('Description', array('snippet'=>150))); ?>

The snippet length will let you control the length. Or, if you remove it entirely from the array, I'm pretty sure that will return the entire description.

Items work similarly.
You'll need to go to your theme and look under
your-theme/collections/browse.php
your-theme/items/browse.php

and make the changes there.

HTH!

Your items/browse.php file probably has a line of code that looks something like:

item('Dublin Core', 'Description', array('snippet'=>250)

on collections/browse.php, it would look like this:

collection('Description', array('snippet'=>250)

You can edit those numbers to change the length of the snippet.

It seems as if the key file for me to modify re the description length was the application/views/scripts/index.php file.

You probably don't want to edit that. It's a core file, so your changes would be lost when you upgrade your Omeka installation.