I have been doing some research on how to approach configuration files for the xPhone Game Engine (A cross platform game engine for Smartphones). The design objectives are:

• Human readable – Should be able to read and change configuration
• Used only for initialization and not run time configuration
• Any library used should be small and minimal impact because we are targeting embedded devices

The choices are either to:

• Wrap up tinyxml and have configuration as xml files. xml files are barely human readable though
• Use libconfig, which allows for more human readable. Problem is integration with scripting language in the future
• Code another ini type library

My current favorite is still leaning for xml because:

• tinyxml will be useful if the user of the game engine wants to read/write their own game data in xml format
• xml is supported by python which is the scripting system I would use for the tools and ingame scripts