[atourino]

Consider an XML file consisting of one long line of text. A diff would not be very useful in that case.

[michaelneale]

I guess an XML aware diff could work though? certainly not at all line based...

[jamesbritt]

If it did node-based diffs.

[_pi]

Most diffs do that. The Diff that ships with gvim on Windows has this option on by default and I couldn't find where to turn it off because it was severely screwing up what I was diffing.