Common Settings between two applications

Hi everyone. I hope this has not been asked already; I searched but couldn't find anything.

I'm developping an OpenGL-based graphic application. I would like to have a separate applet to configure and permanently set certain variables, like the screen resolution and the bit depth. While this would be easy to do with Registry keys, I'd prefer to keep the configuration file-based using the Settings functionality. Is there a way to share the Settings across multiple applications?