[Evolution] Message editor crashes on insert inline text - poor chooser?

[Anton Aylward <aja si on ca>]

Those of you with access to MS-Outlook and OpenOffice might
take a look at how file selection is done in those settings and 
compare to this problem.

The situation is this:  I'm editing a message in Evolution and want 
to include a different signature.  Like many of you, I have lots of
different witticisms and aphorisms, and it might happen that one of
them is more suited than my default signature.  I'm sure you've been
in a similar situation.

So I use the menu => insert => inline text option.
Up comes the file chooser.  Awful one, isn't it?  That's why I referred
to the one in Outlook.  I know the guys at Ximian aren't to blame for 
standard Gnome libraries.  I know compared to the directory selector in 
GQView, OpenOffice and Outlook, its pretty lame.  I know some sources 
on GTK+ programming explicitly admit its lame.  But my point is that 
I can get it crash evolution quite easily and quite repeatedly.

My question is twofold:

1) is it the fault of evolution?
2) can things be configured so it doesn't happen without reprogramming?

First: how to reproduce the problem.
As I said, I want a different signature.  My signature files are in a
subdirectory ~/.signatures.  Each is a text file.  I do the "menu =>
insert => inline text" thin and get a modal dialogue box that opens on
my home directory.  It doesn't show the 'hidden' files or directories.
It doesn't show recently accessed files or directories (which I see is
an option in the programming spec, one used - albeit in a different
dialogue box - by GQView.  That all may be beside the point.  My
"problem" is that I can't see or select the directory I want and hence
the file I want.

So I enter, variously, ".signatures" - hoping it will change directory,
".signatures/guessed_name.txt".  In each case the dialogue box errors.
Presumably it hands back a value to the Evolution message editor that
the latter cannot handle, that there is no callback handler for.  
Whatever, the result is that the body of the editor window becomes blank
and I get a message saying the mail handler component of evolution has
died and I need to shutdown and restart evolution.

Credit to the guys at Ximian: the message WAS saved (though not as a
draft).

If there really is no handling of the error return then the answer to
(1) is yes, and that's disappointing. Error handling, checking for 
bad return values, is pretty fundamental.  I hope this isn't the case.
Maybe someone familiar with the source can look-see and if necessary
enter a bug report. 

An overview of the GTK programming manual doesn't make it clear to me 
whether GtkFileSection() default directory CList can be overridden.

As for point (2), if it can be, perhaps an environment variable would
determine if the hidden files and directories are included.

Yes, I know the 'correct' answer is to replace the dialogue box with
something more sensible, more like the MS-Windows or the OpenOffice one.
(The latter shows it CAN be done!)

Another answer would be to have an "insert => signature" and signature
previewer and chooser like in Outlook, but that seems too much to hope
for.

Or is there some other way to force the GtkFileSelection() dialogue
box to show me 'hidden' files and directories?

Anton J Aylward