In the sql/en_US-new.sql standard chart, the fields with the word description in them are defined thus:
# grep description en_US-new.sql | grep -v KEY
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` varchar(60) DEFAULT NULL,
`reason_description` char(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` tinytext NOT NULL COMMENT 'usage description',
`description` tinytext,
`description` tinytext,
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` varchar(200) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL,
`supplier_description` char(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` tinytext,
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL,
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` tinytext,
`description` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
`description` varchar(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`description` varchar(200) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`long_description` tinytext NOT NULL,
`description` varchar(200) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`long_description` tinytext NOT NULL,
`description` tinytext,
`description` varchar(60) DEFAULT NULL,
`description` char(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
In FA v2.5 alpha, it may be useful to classify the description field differently and standardize their field length / type uniformly.
In the following files that refer to supplier_description, there is no truncation occurring in the code (except where function text_row() is used):
inventory/purchasing_data.php
inventory/includes/db/items_purchases_db.inc
purchasing/includes/purchasing_db.inc
purchasing/includes/db/po_db.inc
reporting/rep209.php
Hence, a mere increase in field size is sufficient ordinarily.
However, where a form field restricts input size / max width using the function text_row() defined in includes/ui/ui_input.inc, changes in 4th (size) and 5th (max width) arguments will also be needed. This is so only in the first file listed above.