Comment 9 for bug 200432

I started today to play with the idea of using svg and cairo to use a blank svg icon without a number in the background and only re-draw the number in the foreground at every update. I think this is working well, it does not hang for me.
I attached this in a new branch.

What do you think, is it working for you?
Note: I'm not sure about dependencies, but this is using cairo, pango and rsvg

Markus