if you need to snip at arbitrary depth it gets harder, this just adds
complete elements until you are too long or snips top level text
==============
<foo>
<item>This is the <strong>body</strong> of an article interspersed with
<strong>markup tags</strong> I'm striving to snip.</item>
</foo>
==============
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
version="1.0">
<xsl:variable name="tl" select="26"/>
<xsl:template match="foo">
<snippets>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</snippets>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="item">
<snippet>
<xsl:apply-templates mode="s" select="node()[1]"/>
</snippet>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="strong">
<i>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</i>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*" mode="s">
<xsl:param name="l" select="0"/>
<xsl:variable name="x">
<xsl:apply-templates select="."/>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="xl" select="string-length($x)"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$l + $xl <= $tl">
<xsl:copy-of select="$x"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="following-sibling::node()[1]" mode="s">
<xsl:with-param name="l" select="$l+$xl"/>
</xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>[...]</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()" mode="s">
<xsl:param name="l" select="0"/>
<xsl:variable name="xl" select="string-length(.)"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$l + $xl <= $tl">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="following-sibling::node()[1]" mode="s">
<xsl:with-param name="l" select="$l+$xl"/>
</xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="substring(.,1,$l + $tl - $xl)"/>[...]</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
==============
$ saxon snip.xml snip.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><snippets>
<snippet>This is the <i>body</i> of an a[...]</snippet>
</snippets>
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