The problems with too much escaping, including image uploads, are fixed. The fixes were rolled into the 1.5.1.3 tarball for now (yeah, I know). Re-download.
ecto doesn't run on Linux, as far as I can tell, so I can't test with it. I test with four different clients and try to get other people to fill in the gaps. ecto seems to be unrepresented on our hackers and testers lists. I encourage ecto users to join the testers list and help us ensure good ecto support.
Thanks for the MT background. I didn't know that, and none of the clients I test with seem to know that either. I'll fix things up.