error visualizing ISO-8859 text

[Ramses Rodriguez Martinez]

since upgrade to 3.14.2-1 (Ubuntu 16.04) some ISO-8859 files are not displayed correctly (showing chinese caracters).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: meld 3.14.2-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-8.23-generic 4.4.2
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-8-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Feb 28 21:34:50 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-08-29 (182 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Alpha amd64 (20150829)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: meld
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-02-28 (0 days ago)

[Ramses Rodriguez Martinez (ramses-harpago)]

The bug is also present on the upstream version 3.14.2, but it seems to be fixed on 3.15.1

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[rduke15 (rduke15)]

Is there a solution for Ubuntu 16.04? How to upgrade meld to the 3.15.1 version, or how to downgrade it to a prvious version without this bug? This bug makes meld completely unusable on the current LTS version, as soon as you come across non-UTF files.

[rduke15 (rduke15)]

Until this is fixed, the workaround suggested in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38919384/configure-meld-encoding-to-cp-1252#39044281 works well if you know which encodings you need.