GtkTreeView: speed optimization with display problems

[Razvan Gavril <razvan gavril gmail com>]

In the search of optimizing the code i have written to populate a treeview, 
I've stumbled to the following problems:

The insertion (>1000 rows) in the treemodel i get it to be blazing fast but 
when i attach/reattach the model to the view there is a big delay before the 
display is drawn/redrawn (about 0.5 sec). This problem is not from my code, 
is gtk's fault, but that isn't a excuse to tell the users of my software, 
isn't it ? So i have to do some future optimizations so i could get a 
application to respond much faster, so the delay between attaching the 
model, and gtk drawing the view to be acceptable. 

Reading the gtk tree view api, i found this function : 

gtk_tree_view_set_fixed_height_mode (). 
> Enables or disables the fixed height mode of *tree_view*. Fixed height 
> mode speeds up GtkTreeView<file:///usr/share/gtk-doc/html/gtk/GtkTreeView.html>by assuming that all rows 
> have the same height. Only enable this option if 
> all rows are the same height and all columns are of type 
> GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED.
 Ok so this is great, it gives me the speed bust that i wanted, all the rows 
of my treeview are the same height, but ... the GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED 
freaks me out, i don't want that :(, it messes out with my view real bad, 
I'll explain why:

I have X columns, for the first column i set it's `expand` property to 
`true` so it can expand and all the X-1 columns stand on the right of the 
view. You can take a look at this picture to see what i mean: 
http://www.linux360.ro/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=1318 ( `File` is expanded, 
`Size` and `Date` are on the right side). If i set the sizing of the columns 
to GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED, the first column (`File` in the picture) 
expands and covers all the other columns, to be more precise : first column 
gets all the treeview width, the other X-1 columns are set to 0 width. I 
could use gtk_tree_view_column_set_min_width() to this column so they won't 
be 0 sized, but this is't a valid option as i the min size that i wants 
depends on the font size and other parameters that i can't know.

My question: is there a way to use gtk_tree_view_set_fixed_height_mode(), 
without setting the sizing of the columns to GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED, or 
is there a way to get rid of the 0 width behavior. 
-- 
Razvan Gavril
razvan gavril gmail com