When it comes to text files, the embedded diff viewer is extremely helpful, allowing me to quickly click between files and see what changed. While it is possible to specify external tools for diffing non-text files, it is currently not possible to do so with the same ease of use or convenience. Embedded Diff and Custom Diff are currently mutually exclusive.

This request is to add an extensibility mechanism for the embedded diff viewer. I am thinking of this similarly to Windows' IFilter mechanism that allows custom preview renderers to be specified for any file type.

For example, if I wanted to diff a custom binary serialization that my company uses, I could write a program that converts it to text. Perhaps the program outputs the text to std-out, perhaps to a temp file - either way, Plastic would take that output and feed it into the standard text diffing feature. Similarly, it would make sense to provide the same functionality for images. In order to see diffs for 3MF files, I would specify a program that converts 3MF to BMP.