Hi Thomas:

I have started on this. My first commit:

 changeset:   6593:e70e2789bc2c

removed all the magic numbers 25, 30 from the code and replaced them with references to
indexer.maxlength. I added testing for the code paths and sent it to CI.

If nothing else, this reduces your diff to the one liner:

-        self.maxlength = 25
+        self.maxlength = 50

I'll try to get to the rest of the changes (db migration, modify maxlength, tests) tomorrow
or the next day I hope.