1 The Oz Engine: ozengine

Like Java, Oz is also based on the idea of byte code execution. ozengine is an emulator that implements the Oz virtual machine. It is normally invoked as follows:

ozengine url args...

where url identifies an Oz application (a pickled functor) and args... are the arguments for the application.

It is also possible to create executable functors. These are ordinary functors, except that when one is invoked as a shell command, it automatically starts ozengine on itself.

Under Windows, an alternative to ozengine is provided called ozenginew. While ozengine is a console-based application, ozenginew is a GUI-based application. Its output appears in message boxes instead of in a console window. Other than that, they behave the same.

Instead of supplying arguments on the command line, you can also indicate a preference for using a graphical interface for editing an application's input parameters:

ozengine --gui url

The --gui option is convenient for starting applications directly from a web browser, simply by clicking. This makes ozengine --gui %s a good choice of a helper application for web documents with MIME type application/x-oz-application. Consult Chapter 6 of ``Application Programming'' for more detailed information.