Comment 10 for bug 1008039

Apparently, the same problem exists on Debian (wheezy), I have
$ inkscape --version
Inkscape 0.48.3.1 r9886 (Dec 29 2012)

If I draw a small rectangle and then run a filter such as Bevels/Button, with normal
display mode, it takes an inordinate amount of time to complete. This is a defect,
but it's not the bug we're after. This bug is that no text is getting displayed in the
box.

In addition, sometimes, Inkscape freezes. And sometimes it logs this line:
(inkscape:3901): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_get_visible: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed
The time taken by the script, and related timeouts, might be the cause of both
misbehaviors.

IIRC, empty boxes used to show up on Windows XP as well, and it could be solved
by carefully reviewing the versions of Python and Gtk. (I'm not going to try that on
Debian.)