I personally like the idea of having a GUI interface to build the list, and having said list stored in a text file. It is both smaller and easy to manipulate without having to load AutoCAD.
However, on the other side of the coin is that users who are not smart enough to manage to write their layer data out manually and effectively, have no business manipulating layer standards anyway. IMMHO ... so if you are smart enough to devise a layer standards protocol, you should be smart enough to write out a simple text file following a predefined format.