IniControls is a small set of components for Delphi. They are primarily for programmers who are writing configuration dialogues that store settings and preferences in the Registry or, if you prefer, in old-fashioned .ini files–or even both).
The IniControls components are like Delphi data-aware components. But instead of linking to a database field, they link to a configuration setting stored in the Registry or in an .ini file. We call them configuration-aware components.
Delphi comes with a TIniFile object that encapsulates the behaviour of .ini files. It also has a TRegIniFile object that lets you write to the Registry as though it were an .ini file. But if you have an even moderately complex configuration dialogue to write, you will find yourself coding large blocks of ReadString and WriteString method calls. This is easy, but tedious.
IniControls lets you snap together components in Designer to build a configuration dialogue with almost no coding. You can save the data in the controls to the Registry or to an .ini file with a single line of code, and restore installation defaults with one more. Loading settings takes no code at all: it's automatic.
IniControls provides a complete set of controls, including edit box, numeric-only edit box, radio button, checkbox, combobox, label, and string grid. It also has an initialized string list, and a simple way to save named sets of settings.
IniControls can handle overloaded keywords (where several controls contribute one bit-position each to the number in the .ini file -- for example [Compatibility] in win.ini). And it can handle ordered n-tuples of values (for example, [PrinterPorts] in win.ini) and more.
The IniControls package support for Delphi 1, 2, 3 and 4. The package includes comprehensive Delphi-integrated help and a real-world demo project.