on second thought... merging both view rule expansion *header* info generation, and windowed range queries into an expanded block, into the same hook, is really limiting & wrong - so split back to two hooks, one stage is just informing the expansion space, the next provides per-row information within an expanded block with range-based queries

src/ctrl/ctrl_core.c

@@ -569,6 +569,22 @@ ctrl_entity_list_from_handle_list(Arena *arena, CTRL_EntityStore *store, CTRL_Ha
   return result;
 }
 
+//- rjf: entity array data structure
+
+internal CTRL_EntityArray
+ctrl_entity_array_from_list(Arena *arena, CTRL_EntityList *list)
+{
+  CTRL_EntityArray result = {0};
+  result.count = list->count;
+  result.v = push_array_no_zero(arena, CTRL_Entity *, result.count);
+  U64 idx = 0;
+  for(CTRL_EntityNode *n = list->first; n != 0; n = n->next, idx += 1)
+  {
+    result.v[idx] = n->v;
+  }
+  return result;
+}
+
 //- rjf: cache creation/destruction
 
 internal CTRL_EntityStore *

src/ctrl/ctrl_core.h

@@ -160,6 +160,13 @@ struct CTRL_EntityList
   U64 count;
 };
 
+typedef struct CTRL_EntityArray CTRL_EntityArray;
+struct CTRL_EntityArray
+{
+  CTRL_Entity **v;
+  U64 count;
+};
+
 typedef struct CTRL_EntityRec CTRL_EntityRec;
 struct CTRL_EntityRec
 {
@@ -806,6 +813,9 @@ internal void ctrl_entity_list_push(Arena *arena, CTRL_EntityList *list, CTRL_En
 internal CTRL_EntityList ctrl_entity_list_from_handle_list(Arena *arena, CTRL_EntityStore *store, CTRL_HandleList *list);
 #define ctrl_entity_list_first(list) ((list)->first ? (list)->first->v : &ctrl_entity_nil)
 
+//- rjf: entity array data structure
+internal CTRL_EntityArray ctrl_entity_array_from_list(Arena *arena, CTRL_EntityList *list);
+
 //- rjf: cache creation/destruction
 internal CTRL_EntityStore *ctrl_entity_store_alloc(void);
 internal void ctrl_entity_store_release(CTRL_EntityStore *store);