prepend existing path (for parent/child) without duplicates

Hi,
This is different from the request in http://drupal.org/node/241495 I think.
i just want to place nodes of a certain type at a certain path, but have that path also respect the existing hierarchy (e.g., http://url.com/node-type/parent/child/grandchild etc).

Under Node Path Settings, I can use [fullhierarchypath] to respect the hierarchy – or – I can use [type-name] to use the node type. But I can't so something like [type-name]/[fullhierarchypath] or else the path repeats the type over and over for each level of parent-child relationship (like this: http://url.com/node-type/node-type/node-type/parent/child/grandchild). Not what I had in mind... I am trying to use the node-type just as a way to categorize the site into 'sections' so the url will help people know where they're at (along with corresponding breadcrumbs).

One way I found to get around this is to give those node-types a vocabulary containing the term I want to use, and make that optional (so i can select it for parents, but not for children) – then use [term-raw]/[fullhierarchypath] .... that way only one term shows if only the top-level parent has this taxonomy term selected.

This just seems like not the best workaround, and hoping there may be a better way to do it that I'm just not aware of yet?

Cheers!
Scott