[BZ#787690] Meld replaces micro, degrees, gozinta symbols with \escape chars, then will not save

Submitted by PatrickPhotog

Description

Meld issues a warning about bad characters, replaces them with escape sequences and then refuses to save the file because of the escape sequences it created.

After copying and pasting the meld->mangled version to a flat text file and performing a gvim file->split dif, the characters it cannot cope with include the Micro char, (µ)->\B5 [works fine here], degrees (°)->\B0 and gozinta (÷)->\F7

There may be other characters it can not handle.

Upon trying to save, an error message box pops up and the save is rejected: [meld icon] Could not save file bpb.c gtk-source-file-saver-error: The buffer contains invalid characters. (0)

This is a C language source file which calls low level routines, some of which require NULL termination. Micro/degrees/etc... are used in reports.

There is no problem with C compilers or editors.

And, it will not tell you where the characters it objects to are. looking line by line through tens of thousands of lines for red marks is more pain than just using gvim

uname -a Linux vulcan 4.11.8-2-default #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jun 29 14:37:33 UTC 2017 (42bd7a0) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

meld 3.16.4