show text abstract in discussion group post

[Joshua Lipton/Slowtrain]

Alright... here's a poser that my limited (but growing by leaps and bounds)
Frontier/Manila knowledge has me stuck at.
In my discussion group, I want to in let's say the topic list show the first
200 characters of the post.

My example:

--------START EXAMPLE------------------------

Topic: (this is where the subject goes - I have this right)
Posted by (author - again, I have this)
On (date - I''ve got this right too)
Total Messages (got it) | Reads (got this too)

(this is the part that I need help implementing) This is the first 200
characters of the post and this is what makes me so very interested that I
actually bother to click on this particular link instead of the myriad of
other posts. It helps me as a user figure out not just from the subject, but
from the beginning of the body whether I should waste my valuable time on
clicking into this .... (end the part that I need to figure out)

-------END EXAMPLE----------------------------

Your help is totally appreciated... if this is so involved that you would
have to do extensive work to accomplish this, let me know how much it takes
and I could try to work something out, but in the spirit of my small
checkbook, I'm really hoping someone has done this before.

Thanks!
Joshua Lipton
slowtrain