[Greg McKaskle]

The white paper introduces the ini VIs, or the Config VIs I think they are called. As you said, XML, a text file, or even a binary file will work. I chose the ini file for the driver station and dashboard for the occasions when people want to view or edit it by hand. People may claim that XML is human readable, but not by normal humans.

The biggest difference in the approaches is that XML can encode more data types than ini, but ini is more human readable.

The other axis of this is how you read and write to the controls and indicators. You can use locals, value properties, or even VI server methods that are name and variant based. In my opinion, it is really a personal preference as to which to use. All of them work fine. The value and method allow the code to go into a subVI and are therefore more compact and more extensible, but are initially a bit harder to read and somewhat more brittle when things change.

Greg McKaskle