Saving a gpg signed message as plain text from Evolution?

[George Shaffer]

I've searched the archives and have found messages somewhat related to
this, but nothing that actually helps. I'm using Evolution 1.4.5; it's
old and I'd love to upgrade everything but that is not an option at this
time.

In the past I've saved what I gather are called in line signatures to a
file and verified them with no problem. It never occurred to me that
saving the multi part messages that Evolution creates when you sign one
of your own messages would be a problem. The multi part messages are
convenient, but if the only place that you can verify a specific message
from is the email client that it was sent from (and the original
recipient), it defeats a major purpose of digital signatures: proof of
who sent it and that the message is unchanged. 

In a legal dispute the sender would look like a fool if he claimed it
verified in the email program on his PC, but could not get it to verify
anywhere else. The only other person who could verify the message, would
be the person least likely to have any desire to assist.

I've spent hours trying to get a signed message out of the sent folder
of Evolution. Using a message with an in line signature as an example
and gpg error messages, I've gotten to the point that gpg will try to
verify it but it always verifies bad. 

That is not surprising since Evolution breaks very long URLs into 2 or
three lines, converts copyright symbols to =C2=A9, adds =20 here and
there (I think blanks at the end of a line), adds returns (^M) at the
end of every line in the message area. Something I saw suggested this
was part of the standard? I've fixed everything I could find and tried
it with and without the returns and with and without spaces for =20 and
all verify bad.

Is there anything that I can do to get a signed email out of Evolution
1.4.5 as verifiable plain text. It's pretty important and any assistance
would be much appreciated. I'm willing to do just about anything,
include resend it to someone who has a client that will save it in a way
that it can be verified. Privacy is not a concern, as I plan to post
this email to my web site. But the second sentence says "Please note
that this is a digitally signed document, and legal notice . . ." and it
will look pretty dumb if I have to explain why it won't verify.

In the future, I will prepare and sign important documents outside of
Evolution, and paste them in when they're ready, if I can't find
something better.

George Shaffer
-- 
For my GnuPG key ID and fingerprint see http://geodsoft.com/about/