Comment 67 for bug 527267

It would seem that the only way to solve this issue is to basically write a completely new widget for the indicator applet instead of re-using the menu widget. I realize this is less than ideal and is no quick fix, but in light of how big an issue this has become, I think it would be worth it. An icon menu really is quite a different than than a textual menu, and so it makes sense to have a different amount of spacing between the two. I do not believe this would cause any confusion among users nor a loss of consistency with other menus.