Modifying itemband code

For JFreeReport version 0.8.7-3, would it be possible to modify the source code for itemband generation such that it repeats columns instead of rows?

e.g.

input dataset:
row1: r1 r2 r3 r4
row2: r5 r6 r7 r8

original itemband:
same as dataset

new itemband:
row1: r1 r5
row2: r2 r6
row3: r3 r7
row4: r4 r8

Good luck. Feel free to try your luck on it, but given the fact that this code is more than 6 years old, I (and probably no one else) has much recollection of what is going on in there.