Hi Michael,

>Is the Astute Graphics stuff running as a plug-in inside of Illustrator?

If so then probably Adobe does make that stuff accessible through functions that a plug-in can call, but that kind of mechanism would only work for a plug-in that runs inside of Illustrator, not a completely separate program that's trying to communicate to Illustrator only by writing a file out.

Yes it does, good point! This also carries the negative aspect of requiring updates of plug-ins for new versions of Illustrator. On and on it goes, and where it stops, only Marketing knows. :/