Warning rather than Truncate

Okay. I think I figured out how to disable the truncating of content. Another benefit to this hack is that Maxlength won't truncate existing content that exceeds the limit, so adjustments can be made rather than losing the truncated content after opening node to edit. It would be nice if this could be added as an option, but for now this is working. For anyone who is interested, here's what I did:

First I adjusted the JavaScript so countdown goes into negative rather than stopping at zero as mentioned here:

http://drupal.org/node/540780

/modules/maxlength/maxlength.js

//if (remainingCnt < 0) {
//  field.val(field.val().substr(0, limit));
//  remainingCnt = 0;
//}

Then I commented out the following:

/modules/maxlength/maxlength.module

/*
    if ($remaining < 0) {
      drupal_set_message(
        t('%body_field_label truncated to %limit characters!',
        array(
          '%body_field_label' => $element['#title'],
          '%limit' => $values['limit'])
        ),
        'error'
      );

      $element['#default_value'] = drupal_substr($element['#default_value'], 0, $values['limit']);
      $remaining = 0;
    }
*/

/*
function maxlength_nodeapi(&$node, $op, $a3 = NULL, $a4 = NULL) {
  $fields = array('title', 'body');

  foreach ($fields as $field) {
    $limit = intval(variable_get(MAXLENGTH_NODE_TYPE . $field .'_'. $node->type, ''));
    if ($limit > 0) {
      switch ($op) {
        case 'validate':
          $form = $a3;
          if (drupal_strlen($node->$field) > $limit) {
            form_set_error($field, t('The !field field has exceeded its maximum number of characters (!limit).', array('!limit' => $limit, '!field' => $field)));
          }
          break;
        }
    }
  }
}
*/