>>>XML is fine. I just try to avoid dealing with the Windows registry. Like DLL's, the registry was an idea that I am sure seemed great at the time, but . . . .
>>>
>>I agree about avoiding the windows registry which was definitely a bad idea to begin with but DLLs?? .NET, C++, C and everything else about windows programming is infested with them. But this is because they allow code to be shared and all in all make windows faster and more efficient. Maybe you mean "DLL Hell" which is a direct result of using the windows registry with DLLS (which you don't have to) which again narrows the problem down to the registry,
>
>IIRC some of the facets of classic "DLL Hell" include:
>* identically named DLLs from different sources that had inconsistent versioning and differing features
>* installers that ignored versioning, installed older version DLL over newer, resulting in loss of functionality or revert to buggy behavior.
>* Windows only loads DLL when required - if already loaded it uses in-memory copy. Although you carefully isolated each program and its DLLs into separate folders, you still might run into situation where order in which program you load first, program might end up running with wrong DLL (e.g. Program "A and "B" both have DLL, but "B" has newer version. Running "B" by itself works. However if you launch "A" before "B" you get strange behavior. Due to caching, incorrect behavior tends to persist until you reboot or clear the cache).


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell:

"DLL hell can be substantially avoided using Registration-free COM, the only limitation being it requires at least Windows XP or later Windows versions and that it must not be used for EXE COM servers or system-wide components..."