I don't know if there are more to this or if it would break some other rules but as of my testing it should be fine to remove this rule for headers that have no sorting applied to them.
This is the case already for "normal sized" tables as the padding-right rule is only applied if there is a sorting class to the element. But it has been forgotten for the table-sm variant. So there are two options that I can see.
Specify this rule does not apply if there is a sorting_disabled class
Do the same as what was done for the normal sized table in the following commit: 4e611f31ff
DataTables which character is used as a decimal place in the table's
data, so that number which are formatted using characters other than a
dot as the decimal place can be correctly detected and sorted.
- A large part of the world uses the comma as a decimal place, so it
makes sense to have this option built-in directly to DataTables,
rather than needing to use plu-in sorting types as before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
- However, the decimal place character cannot be detected automatically
since there are far to many ambiguities. As such, a new
`language.decimal` option is defined which is passed through to the
type detection functions. The type detection functions can then use
that character to alter their detection functions to transform numbers
into the dot formatted equivilent for parsing in Javascript.
- The numeric sorting methods have been bundled together in the function
`_addNumericSort` which is called when a character is given for the
decimal mark, adding the sorting functions required specifically for
that mark. This means that any character at all can be added, while
keeping the table's sort performance as it was.
- Code size in increased a little for this new feature, but a lot of
work has been done to keep it to a minimum (while still optimising for
the most common use case of a dot decimal place), and this is a good
feature to have in DataTables' core code.
- All required documentation added and updated.
- Special thanks to Tobias Bäthge for suggesting and sponsoring this
feature.