too much space around text

[Markus Lutzer]

Hello!
I am using GNU/Linux for several years now and like it very much. One
issue I always disliked is the extensive space, windows managers require
on the screen to display text. Because of this menus and windows become
too big thus the screen looks crowded and confusing. It is the same with
KDE and GNOME. For example, the GNOME panel on top of my screen is 24
pixel high. The entry "System" (which has upper case letters as well as
a "y" which goes below the line) is 12 pixel high. This is 100%
additional space over and below the text together. (Cp. attachment
panel_menu_orig.png) For my opinion 2 pixel for example would be enough
and result in a cleaner and thus virtually "bigger" screen because about
25% more information would fit on it. (Cp. attachment
panel_menu_shrinked.png). This phenomenon is present whenever text is
displayed. For instance the list mode in Nautilus could display much
more entry without the wasted space. For example the file browser of
OpenOffice.org displays four files/folders at once by default which
makes it very uncomfortable to browse through a file system with more
than ten files (Cp. attachment filebrowser2.png). MS Windows does this
job better and therefore looks cleaner. Why not GNOME and KDE?!

Also I could not manage to customize the space consumption in KDE or
GNOME. Is there any possibility to change this behaviour? If so, why it
is not changed by default?!

Cheers, Markus

PS: I am not speaking about the font size itself which is ok for me.

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