As other widgets, lists can be initialized from the environment using autoglade annotation to its name, for example:
treeview1:auto:init:env
will use the environment variable treeview1 to obtain list header and items
export treeview1='("Fruits" "Apples" "Bananas" "Hedge aple" "Kiwifruits" "Melons" "Oranges" "Pineapples" "Strawberries" )'
Using one of the tests also present in the svn repository
$ ./list.sh

and, after selecting one item and pressing OK
treeview1='("Kiwifruits")'
autoargs='$treeview1'
appears in application's stdout.
More information about autoglade can be obtained from http://autoglade.sf.net.