[TYPO3-ttnews] Questions about tt_news: Alternative templates and truncation of body text

[Stephen Bungert]

I have defined my template location with typoscript in my root page template
as described in:
http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/tt_news/2.
5.0/view/1/3/#id2926212 
it also states that on the template tab you can:

"... overwrite the html-template defined globally by TypoScript with another
one."

I use the same template for all news, whatever the category.

But on my home page I have a sidebar and I need the news from a category
displayed like this

Title Date
Snipped body text... [more]

I changed the template in tt_news content element on the homepage to one
just for the sidebar. However I still see it using the template defined in
typoscript. Why does it not use the one defined in the template tab in
preference to the typoscript one (which is what the manual said it would
do).

Also is it possible to just display the first 60 characters, for example,
from the news articles body text followed by ... in LIST mode?