Comment by samuelstros

I think our goals indeed differ.

> How often are binary files being diffed? How long does it take to materialize? How long to run a diff algorithm?

If version control is embedded in an app, constantly.

Imagine a cell in a spreadsheet. An application wants to display a "blame" for a cell C43 i.e. how did the cell change over time?

The lix way is this SQL query

SELECT * from state_history WHERE file_id <the_spreadsheet> AND schema_key "excel_cell" AND entity_id C43;

Diffing on the fly is not possible. The information on what changed needs to be available without diffing. Otherwise, diffing an entire spreadsheet file for every commit on how cell C43 changed takes ages.