Hi,
Short description gets used in META TAGS in Virtuemart and mostly taken as "description" by google index spider, therefore whatever you type there, they will be converted to plain texts before gets saved to database. And this functionality has absolutely nothing to do with our VM Template, this is how Virtuemart was developed but it makes sense, you can't put HTML in the META TAGS or no table will be disabled in google search result. They should be plain and logical short description about the product. Short Description is usually for SEO purposes and it should be no more than 1 or 2 sentences.
I don't understand your 2nd question, but again. Your Virtuemart Backend, has absolutely nothing to do with our VM Template. Our VM Template only show in the front-end what ever gets saved to your database with using Virtuemart itself.
Try to change your text editor. Consider to get JCE Text editor for your Joomla. It is much better advanced WYSIWYG text editor and you will be get much better result with it. (It is free. To download visit here:
www.joomlacontenteditor.net/downloads/editor/joomla-25)
Regards.
Forum Support.