Hi Dennis,
First of all: welcome to the JavaRanch!
I think it's not an issue and completely up to you. I used 0 and didn't document that decision, because I never considered the use of 1 as a starting point, because everything in the
Java world is 0-based: arrays, lists, stringbuilders,... And I agree with Alex: for the real user it makes no difference if it's 0 or 1 (as long as he/she sees the correct record) and another java developer could also be the user (having to make changes to your program), so it won't be that intuitive for him/her.
But if you give some good reasons to start with 1 in your choices.txt, I don't think it is a problem and you certainly won't fail automatically because of that.
Kind regards,
Roel