Using Illustrator .ai files in a Cocoa application

I have a client inquiring about developing a Cocoa application that would open Illustrator files. How viable is this in your opinion? How closed is the format? I can't seem to find any useful information on Adobe's site.

Thanks in advance!

Solution

Modern ai files are PDF files (CS3 thru CS5) with application specific comments. Adobe Illustrator will ignore the actual PDF data when opening an ai file and just use the comments it inserted when writing it.

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