Newspaper-column list?

[Colin Watson <cjwatson ubuntu com>]

Hi,

I have an application with a rather long list currently rendered as a
GtkTreeView within a GtkScrolledWindow. (For context, it's a list of
languages supported by an OS installer.) I have had user requests for
this to be rendered as a newspaper-column list instead, since the number
of items in the list is such that it should easily fit on one screen
that way and save users from having to scroll to find their language. In
other words, I'd like it to look something like this:

  Item 1    Item 6    Item 11
  Item 2    Item 7    Item 12
  Item 3    Item 8    Item 13
  Item 4    Item 9    Item 14
  Item 5    Item 10   Item 15

As far as I can see there's no support for this in GTK. I could probably
do it with a custom GtkTreeView that figures out how many rows will be
visible and does some appropriate balancing of columns, but I suspect
there will be plenty of gotchas involved. Google has been of no help, so
before diving in and trying to do it myself I thought I'd ask: does
anyone have sample code that does this already?

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson ubuntu com]