It appears that Mellel 2.1.1 (build 3) displays only the first few lines of .txt files with ISO-8859-1 encoding (from Project Gutenberg), as if these lines were the entire file. TextEdit has no problems displaying the entire content of the same files.
The import method you described successfully opens and displays the contents of the ISO-8859-1 files. I'm afraid it didn't occur to me to import a .txt file -- forgive my lack of imagination.
jncomas wrote:I'm afraid it didn't occur to me to import a .txt file -- forgive my lack of imagination.
That’s a thing that not only happens to you. I’m also used to simply drag some files to Mellel’s dock icon and hope they would be opened properly. Only when this fails, I use the import method.