I hear you loud and clear re "someone's got to code it". I really didn't want my text to come across as "Why can't those programmers code what I want and not what they want?", and sure hope it doesn't read that way; nuances get lost in writing. For the record, I bow in humbled awe – and thanks! – before the Drupal coders, and only want to express good-natured, friendly, "huh, how about that?" surprise that flexible custom teasers weren't desired by more devs right from the start. If they're satisfied holding off on that feature until 6.x, well, I can be mildly surprised, but I certainly claim no right to complain!

And speaking of 6.x, it looks like the coders are creating a nifty system offering both teasers (automated excerpts of main body text) and – new word here – summaries, the flexible custom teasers I wished for. (Thanks for the links!) Excellent. It's really amazing to watch the progress of the project.