into a single gdk_draw_layout() where conveniently feasible, after
some work with xtrace revealed this as a major source of pterm's
slow display updates when using client-side fonts.
Ideally we ought to be able to do better. I know exactly what
sequence of X protocol operations I want to see on the wire, but I
don't know how to persuade Pango to generate them.
[originally from svn r8558]