Reduce notification area icon spacing

[lingenfr]

It is mentioned in bugs and other posts, but they are old and don't provide an answer. On my small screen, the extra horizontal spacing/padding between the icons in the notification area takes up far, far too much space. Is there a way to reduce the spacing/padding. Preferably, I would put it back to what it was in Karmic which I think was about half the current spacing/padding. Thanks.

[lingenfr]

Any help?

[ross9885]

I've been messing with the gtkrc file for the theme that I happen to be using at the moment, but it's over 3000 lines long and I'm getting strange results because I don't fully understand how all the options work together.

[lingenfr]

Yes, since it used to work and now it is 'broken' it would be nice if the devs would tell us how to put it back. Seems a bit windows-ish.