Long file names in Dired

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

Hi all,

so I have some really, really long filenames (say, more than 70
characters), and I'd like to shorten them so they don't spill to the
next line in Dired.  I can toggle-truncate-lines, of course, but then
I don't see the extension, and I'd prefer to truncate the part /before/
the extension.

Is there any Dired hack enabling this?  If not, where i should tinker to
achieve that?  Would making some parts of the text invisible be a good
way to do that?  If yes, is there any Dired hook I could use for that?

BTW, the /reason/ I have long filenames is that I have a bunch of pdfs
with scientific articles, and I decided that putting the author names,
publication year and a ttile (at least shortened) into the filename
might be a good idea so that I don't get lost.  An alternative would be
e.g. an Org-mode based database with links to files, but then relocating
them would be non-trivial.

TIA,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University