>The user settings form is currently called from a form method called from form init. If the user cancels out of the settings form, I return .F. from the main form's init.

Too many "from near form near from form near form from form" in a single line for a Friday evening. I'll just stick to my intuitive image of what you're doing and won't pretend I've actually understood.

>Problem: A form called from a TL form's init cannot be seen unless it is itself a top-level form. A top-level form cannot be modal, and therefore cannot return a result. I could set the form's showwindow property to 'In-Screen', and temporarily show the screen, but this seems kludgy.
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>I am looking for a logical program flow that will get deal with my being forced to choose between "in-screen" and "In top-level form".

Short of checking the registry before the outer form is run, and then runing the settings form _before_ the TL form... Visually, you should be getting the same thing - if you do it from TL.init, the TL is not shown before the settings form. Therefore, there's no difference if you run the settings form separately, from main.prg - other that it can be the only form now, and can be top-level.

I'm still not sure I'm making sense...