Question about format_type function

The format_type function is great, except for the way it formats varchars,
it always returns Character Varying or whatever, it would be nice if it
had a option to return a short version of
these names. i.e.

format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod,true) would return all short names

format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod,false) would return full names

I don't know of any other system that shows varchars in this way, they
should just be formated as varchar(50).

If there is another way to do this without messy case statements please
let me know.

Thanks,

Tony