line spacing in gtk2 / gtk 1.2

[Peter Daum <gator_ml yahoo de>]

Is there any way to influence the line spacing used by Gtk2?

Generally, Gtk2 is very generous with precious screen real estate.
This is particularly noticeable when comparing the default line spacing
in different widgets (lists, tree views, text ...) between Gtk1 and Gtk2.

I personally prefer to get as much information as possible per square inch.
I spent quite some time looking but couldn't figure out any way to get
a more compact in programs using Gtk2. To illustrate the issue, I attached
2 snippets showing the same web page in Seamonkey using GTK1.2 and Firefox.
(Fascinatingly, to get the same font size, I have to specify 14 pixels in
Seamonkey vs. 18 pixels for firefox).

Best would be some way to globally tell Gtk2 to use 20% less spacing between
lines. Is there any way to do something like this via gtkrc, fontconfig or
whatever? (I tried setting "minspace" to "true" in fonts.conf, which sounded
promising but doesn't make any difference).

Regards,
                  Peter Daum