Display HTML Taxonomy Terms as per selected vocabulary in a 4 cols x # of rows as required

Enviroment Drupal 5.3, eCommerce 5.x.3.4, hosted on WinNT, MSIIS6.0, php 4.4.7, mysql 5.0.45

I have an e-commerce site where i navigate to a product via 3 levels. The first level is on the navigation menu - 4 ~ 6 Catagories, the 2nd level are up to 25+ "pages" each a vocabulary with a table containing a number of HTML links as per the parent vocabulary.

When a specific link on the table of the vocabulary page is clicked, the product node is displayed.

After struggling with the theme "override" challenge - i coppied the taxonomy terms (links) from the specific vocabulary page, pasted into an excel spreadsheet, (one column with up to 112 rows), re arranged the terms into a 4 col by (up to) 28 rows block, coppied the block into the "body" of the vocabulary's page & formated the table and fornts. There are 6 Catogories with up to 25 vocabularies each, so i had to create over 100 of these pages - A mind numbing exercise... and if terms are added upgrading is a serious time consuming issue.

I need to be smarter and able to dynamically generate the table of terms on the vocabulary page - I think i have isolated what needs to be done.. and need some guidance to confirm or correct my approach.

Challenge:- DISPLAY TERMS OF THE SPECIFIC VOCABULARY's PAGE AS HTML LINKS IN A TABLE 4 COLS X (up to) 28 ROWS

The theme i am using is garland.

•The selection of terms to be displayed is handled by the "term display" module - the PHP file is term_display.module
•The CSS for the theme is style.css in the garland theme directory
•The file node.tpl.php in the garland theme directory displays the taxonomy terms as defined by the term display module using a class as defined in the style.css (i think).
I think i need to write a php script in the vocabulary's body to generate a table and populate with the links (terms of the specific vocabulary).. is this the best place or do i need to modify the term_display.module??

Do i need to create a "style" or "class" for the table in the style.css file

If i then choose to disable the term display option in the Catagory/edit vocabulary section, the terms should still be available to be displayed in the node body (right?? i wouldn't want it to be displayed twice)
Is this the correct approach?

Can someone guide me with examples that i can relate this to?

example - where do i put in the "class" for the table - (what file... is it in the style.css in the garland theme directory, or is there an override css file)
php code to generate the terms for each table cell - (in the body of the vocabulary page ??)
"term Display" module option - do i need to select "load" as an option

(I hope this is the appropriate place for this issue)

Thank you in advance.