ActiveX or stand alone?

DM supports both types of applications. They don't differ much - the only point is that the relation between the Display Machine - the part of the runtime which runs DM programs is either master or slave:

ActiveX

Stand alone

the COM container (the program calling the component) calls the Display Machine which is registered as ActiveX component. Then DM tells ActiveX the name of the DM program to execute. DM then loads the necessary DLL (if Visual Eiffel is used) or the necessary Java class files. DM is the master - and your application takes over the "passive" part. The program asks to display a form on the screen. This is done by calling the feature display of the class DISPLAYABLE - either direct or indirect (as feature of an attribute) 

Your program is active, DM is only used as "Slave"