Searching through the archives, I've seen a million category list display questions, but none of them are like mine.

It seems to be a fairly simple thing, but not for me. What I want is a routine to build a categories list using only my ROOT categories, and I want to use the list that builds as a token in every one of my pages, from the home page to the modify link form... global. (putting it in a menu bar down the left, typical stuff) I don't use subcategories at all, so I don't need any reference to them.

It strikes me as simpler than the original script, but I don't know how to do it. Right now the kludge I'm using is to make every one of my root categories related to every other, and I've edited the display of related categories so that it looks the same as my homepage category list (1 column, very simple)

Thanks for any help.
Phoenix