This is probably getting boring for most of the world but.....
I just ran the Rugbot in the air with a simple program of spirals. I ran the pattern with and without the "A axis" running. The pattern consists of a 12 layer CCW spiral connected to a 12 layer CW spiral. When I ran the Rugbot without the A axis the total time was 4:39 minutes, with the A axis running the total time was 4:50 minutes. This implies that in blended moves the A axis will run at speeds greater that the designated F960 if 1mm = 1 degree. If the A axis was actually running at a feed rate of 960 degrees per minute in the blended moves the program should have taken about 9 minutes to complete. Part of the time diffence is because the A axis needed to rotate 180 degrees at the start, which it sounded like it did at a rate of 960 degrees per minute.
So what practical matter does this make? When using the "Tangent Knife" tool in Gcodetool it inserts a G01 line of code for the A axis between every line of G01 gode for the X,Y,Z,I,J,A. With smooth curves or straight lines the value of "A" on the single line is usually the same as the value for "A" included in the previous line and you get nice continous movement. No problems here. If you have a sharp corner, from a corner node in iInkscape, the "A" axis will only rotate at the designated feed rate which is usually relative slow when comparing degrees to millimeters. ( I would think it would be even worse if using inches?). When I edited all of the "G01 A" lines of code to "G00 A" code using "search and replace" in Gedit I still had smooth continuous movement with out any starting and stopping between lines of G02 G00 G03 etc and had a run time of 4:41 minutes which is practically the same as when I ran the test without the A axis in use.
So, in one practical test, sort of, many of my problems seem to be solvable by doning a search and replace of the gcode file in a text editor to replace all of the "G01 A" with rapid "G00 A" with little consiquences. (I have an regex in the "additional post pprocessor" field of the preferences box in Gcodetools so I can't easiely do it when generating "Path to Gcode".)