Just guessing... :-)

I don't have a perl example, but SimpleList inherits methods from from TreeView, and Googling for hiding rows leads to Gtk2::TreeModelFilter, which has a method $filter->set_visible_column. I've yet to see an example, but Kevin Ryde's Gtk2::Ex::TreeModelFilter::Change looks close, but you would have to use Gtk2::Ex::SimpleList. You might ask this on the Perl/Gtk2 maillist .

The SimpleList is tied internally to it's list arrays, so why does it bother you to splice the rows in and out? That probably would be easiest. :-)

I have seen this trick

Is the only way to make a column hidden in a SimpleList by defining a 
+new type?

Gtk2::SimpleList -> add_column_type( 'new',
                                     type => 'Glib::String',
                                     attr => 'hidden' );
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But then you would have to loop thru all columns for your row, a simple splice-in and out seems easiest.