Maybe one thing you could do is run down the list of existing pyGtk apps at :
http://www.pygtk.org/applications.html (and maybe google for some others)
... and try out some potential candidates. There are quite a few "catalog" apps for this and that : maybe one of those is (or can be made) generic enough to merit a Hildon port as a general-purpose tool ?
(Personally I liked Portabase on the Zaurus too...)