Rapid80:
My answer didn't get posted yesterday, so I'll re-write it. I have decided on using one led per segment with the max7219.
As I pointed out back in #30, you can easily expand this to using multiple MAX7219s to individually control as many of those LEDs as you wish to use.
You could for example, use three LEDs per segment and drive one from each of three MAX7219s and feed the MAX7219s in parallel from the same three control pins. This would however be something of a wiring nightmare.
If instead, you just wire the three (or four) LEDs in a given segment as part of a row (or column), then you can code it so that the chained MAX7219s are mapped (initially as an array of 8-bit bytes) to a long "string" (not a string variable 
) which you then re-map in the small groups which represent each segment, to match the physical segments to which you then apply the pattens for the digits you need to display.
This is what coding - with microcontrollers - is actually for - to convert a hardware structure to something to which you can easily "drive".