There's a new manual build available for early testing at http://wendt.se/software/maemo/wifi-..._0.9.0_all.deb which fixes the "space in network name" issue.
Almost every line of code's been refactored (modified in some way) and there might still be on or two rough cuts in there. Known things I need to fix before releasing 0.9.0 properly:
* There's no upgrade/migration script so your settings will be ignored.
* The daemon doesn't show popups until you change this in the menu > Settings > Show popup when connected ...
* If you add a network using Menu > Add Network, and the list was empty when you started the program, it will not appear (the GUI won't update) after you hit Save. Just restart the program and you'll see it, and that it's actually saved.

Steps to install if you want to try it out (as root):
initctl stop wifi-assistant
apt-get -y remove wifi-assistant
rm wifi-assistant*
wget http://wendt.se/software/maemo/wifi-assistant_0.9.0_all.deb
dpkg -i wifi-assistant*deb

Thanks in advance for any bugs you identify and report!