IBM Personal Communications Version 6.0 for Windows operating systems
This document contains information supplementary to the online help and the publications, including newly added functions, hints, tips, restrictions, and corrections. Visit IBM Knowledge Center for other considerations when using Personal Communications Version 6.0, and for complete product documentation.
For information on installing IBM Personal Communications for Windows, refer to the Installation Guide for Installation document. Refer to Quick Beginnings for information about the new features and functionality of Version 6.0.
Names and license terms for third-party components are referenced in license.txt, which is located in the Personal Communications installation directory or in the product installation image.
Thank you for choosing Personal Communications Version 6.0.
FTP Client
Copy as Image
Scratch Pad
Find text in Presentation Space
Maximum number of emulator sessions
Bypass sign-on for TN5250 sessions
Pass-through host certificate validation
Quick Connect for Telnet connections
Bidi enablement for HLLAPI support
ISO Latin 9 (ISO 8859-15) character set support for ASCII (VT) sessions
zSeries Remote Operations Support for NetView
Synchronous SLI_CLOSE verb support
Command line option to start macro
Japanese JIS2004 Unicode support
High Performance Routing (HPR)
APPC Cancel conversation verb support
Connection Network Reachability Awareness support
Margin support for display session
Subscribing to Support News
IBM SupportAssistant
Installing or migrating Personal Communications with Communications Server
Displaying
Arabic data in the VBHLLAPI sample program
APL keyboard support for diamond character
Character distance to fit maximized window in Japanese DBCS session
Copy and Paste between Bidi sessions and word processors
PDT print support added to JIS2004 feature
SSL handshake timeout set to 3 seconds
Retrieve Big5 extended characters from Traditional Chinese UDC area
English 037 host codepage session support for Traditional Chinese installations
Default changed for the Quick Connect bar
VBScript macro file to XML file conversion
Disable VT session connectivity for DBCS locale
FTP client supports 5-digit port numbers
Left and right control keys behave the same for Canadian keyboard
Fixes for APARS and internal defects
FTP Client - Logical Record Length
Fixes for APARS and internal defects
Security Protocol SSLv3 Disabled
Fixes for APARS and internal defects.
Fix for the RC4 "Bar Mitzvah" Attack for SSL/TLS
TLS 1.2 support under Microsoft CryptoAPI (MSCAPI)
Keywords to fail over to the next configured host with Auto Reconnect configured
Support for Host Code Page 1379 - Tranditional Chinese Extended Mixed Host (Growing)
Keyword to hide associated printer sessions
Enhancements to HI License Manager
Fixes for APARS and internal defects
Enhancements to HI License Manager
Personal Communications Version 6.0 is based on the popular Personal Communications Version 5.9. If you are familiar with Personal Communications Version 5.9, you might want to review the following new functions and enhancements.
The Personal Communications FTP client implements the client functionality specified by File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which is the standard protocol for transferring files to and from remote machines running FTP servers either by secure or unsecure connection.
Copies the marked area in the presentation space as a bitmap into the clipboard.
Finds text in Presentation Space of a display session. The text found is highlighted on the screen. The search can be case sensitive or insensitive.
Allows you to make an uneven selection in Presentation Space.
Automatically copies the selected text to the clipboard.
You can start a maximum of 52 emulator sessions per Windows user logon session.
IBM Personal Communications is bundled in a single DVD-ROM image, which contains all the supported language images.
Application-level Telnet keepalive processing to detect partner/host availability.
Allows you to bypass iSeries login screen by sending a SHA1 password substitute.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for more information.
Allows you to disable the default certificate validation process during the SSL handshake.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for more information.
You can connect a Telnet (3270/5250/ASCII) session quickly using the Quick Connect Bar by configuring only Host, Port and LU Name/Workstation ID.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for more information.
Enables the BIDI support to HLLAPI to send the BIDI data correctly based on the bidi attributes.
Support of the ISO Latin 9 (ISO 8859-15) character set is now available for ASCII (VT) sessions.
This feature enables you to intercept Edit keys in addition to the existing all keystrokes, when EHLLAPI is been used.
Refer to the Emulator Programming Guide for details about this feature.
The Remote Operations Support (ROPS) feature enables commands issued by
NetView RUNCMD to execute under the Windows command line interface of the remote
machine whose CP name is specified in the RUNCMD.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference and Configuration File
Reference for more information.
Now, and administrator can force the SLI_CLOSE verb to return synchronously.
Refer to Configuration File Reference and Client/Server Communications Programming Reference for more information.
You can start the macro by specifying the macro file name as a parameter. The macro will be executed automatically after the session starts.
The JIS2004 support can be enabled by selecting host code page "1390 Japan Katakana Extended(JIS2004)" and "1399 Japan Latin Extended (JIS2004)".
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for more information.
High Performance Routing (HPR) now includes these additional configuration options:
Refer to Configuration File Reference for more information.
The APPC interface includes a new verb CANCEL_CONVERSATION, which allows you to deallocate a conversation even if other verbs are still outstanding. This verb operates in a similar way to the CPI-C Cancel_Conversation (cmcanc) call. The CANCEL_CONVERSATION verb support is also available on Communications Server for AIX, Linux and Windows.
Refer to Client/Server Communications Programming Reference for more information.
This function allows the node to report to a VTAM Network Node server that a given connection network route has a failure. VTAM node will take that route out of the topology and a new route can be calculated.
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) has been upgraded to version 1.6.
Allows you to set the left and top margins for the print screen operation.
You can find documentation and links to other resources at the IBM Knowledge Center for Personal Communications 6.0, at the following address:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEQ5Y_6.0.0/welcome.html
The Knowledge Center provides information in English and Japanese. To view the Japanese content, you must be using a system with a Japanese regional setting. All other regional settings will default to the English content.
The Knowledge Center with a Japanese regional setting also contains FAQs and troubleshooting tips.
To receive Personal Communications support news flashes, complete the following steps:
http://www.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/product/rational/personal_communications
The IBM Support Assistant enables you to easily resolve software questions. The Support Assistant includes the following components:
Help desk personnel and Personal Communications administrators might want to install Support Assistant in order to better support end users. The Support Assistant can be downloaded from the following address:
http://www.ibm.com/software/support/isa/index.html
If you have both Personal Communications and IBM Communications Server for Windows installed on a system, you should not use automatic migration when installing a newer version of Personal Communications.
First, remove both Personal Communications and Communications Server for Windows from the system. You should then reinstall Communications Server, before installing the new version of Personal Communications.
For proper display of Arabic data in the VBHLLAPI sample program, you should do the following:
Refer to Emulator Programming for information about the API sample programs.
Catalan language support has been added to IBM Personal Communications Version 6.0. You can install the Catalan version of PCOMM from the Launchpad application, where Catalan is part of the MLS package.
The APL diamond character (0x70) has been added to the PCOMM APL keyboard. The character is available as the un-shifted state for tilde (~) key when you enable the APL keyboard.
For the Japanese version of PCOMM, if your screen resolution width exceeds 1280 pixels, you can enter the keyword "TextFitMaxWindow" in the .WS profile under [DBCS] stanza to choose spacing between characters to fit PCOMM's maximized window. When "TextFitMaxWindow=N" is set, the character spacing in the display will be narrower. The default value is Y.
Mixed Arabic-English and Hebrew-English text can be copied from and pasted to word processors with complete retention of text reordering.
For Paste, either the HTML or RTF clipboard buffer can be used in order to process BIDI data correctly, if the external word processor supports one of them. To use the HTML buffer, set the keyword RequiredBidiPasteType to HTML under session stanza in the session profile (.WS). To use the RTF buffer, the keyword should be set to RTF. To use the plain text buffer (legacy behavior), the keyword should be set to None. If no value for the property is set (default), the HTML buffer is used.
For Copy, the HTML clipboard buffer can be used. The session generates an HTML buffer which can be pasted into the word processor, if it supports HTML. This generation is enabled by default. In order to copy the host data to clipboard as plain text, set the keyword SupportBidiHTMLCopy to No under session stanza in the session profile (.WS).
IBM5577 and ESC/P PDT mode printing has been added to Japanese JIS2004 Unicode support.
If there is no response from the host for the client hello (initial negotiation), the socket closes after 3 seconds, disconnecting the session.
Previously, for screen sizes greater than 27 x 132 (i.e., 62 x 160), the TerminalTypeString keyword had to be set to IBM-DYNAMIC in the WS profile for establishing a connection successfully. Now the device type is set automatically.
The command line FTP is used to achieve the FTP functionality over the
command line. It is used to transfer files using FTP to/from a host with a UNIX
file system, using pcsftpcmd.exe . It can be invoked from the command line using
a set of parameters and switches.
The functions supported by the executable are:
The necessary arguments for invoking the exe are:
The transfer mode is set to AUTOMATIC, that is, the executable automatically checks to see if the extension of the file to be transferred is any of these: .log, .ini, .txt, .bat, .inf, in which case the mode is set to ASCII. For everything else it is set to BINARY mode.
Use any one of the following switches to invoke help:
The issue here is that the password would be in plain text, which would be a security concern which can be overcome by requesting the customer to explicitly enter the password when the connection is being made.
The initial command line FTP being developed would entertain non-secure connections alone and would not support secure connections. The command line FTP currently under development would support only Windows/Unix style file systems. Other file systems would be supported in future releases.
If the user does not want to give the password in plain text along with the
other parameters, a - can be entered in the password field, and then run the
command which asks for the user to input the password dynamically.
The command line FTP is currently available only in English language.
In Traditional Chinese version, when NewUDCRangeCHT=Y is set, using a new keyword "UDCRangeAdjust=Big5Ext" in .WS profile under [Translation] stanza can exclude Big5 extended characters PC code 0xF9D6 to 0xF9FE out from UDC range.
This function enables Traditional Chinese Personal Communications Version 6.0 to support English 037 sessions in Windows XP and Windows 7 operating systems (both English and Chinese locales).
To enable this support, the Traditional Chinese Personal Communications product must be installed under the Traditional Chinese locale. Then, to use 037 code page sessions, change the locale to English. Do not install the Traditional Chinese Personal Communications product in the English locale.
The Quick Connect bar default is changed to be disabled and does not appear on new 3270, 5250, or ASCII telnet sessions unless enabled by the user.
Existing telnet sessions with the Quick Connect bar enabled continue to display the bar on the session window. To reset existing sessions to use the new default setting, you must delete the LastExitView statements in the PCSWIN.INI and WS files on the user's machine.
This utility enables you to convert a VBScript macro file to an XML file.
With Personal Communications 6.0.4, the IBM Global Security library has been upgraded to 8.0.14.13.
The DBCS version of Personal Communications does not support VT sessions. To avoid confusion, the ASCII selection of the Type of Host option on the Communication > Configure panel is removed when the system locale is set to one of the supported DBCS languages (Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean).
The IBM Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is upgraded to version 1.6.0 SR10-FP1.
The IBM Global Security library is upgraded to 8.0.14.21.
With this release, the Personal Communications FTP Client supports 5-digit port numbers. Both the Quick Connect Bar and the Session Configuration Panel now accept 5-digit port numbers. This is supported for both SSL-enabled and non-SSL connections.
With this release, the left and right control (Ctrl) keys behave the same for the Canadian 445 ACNOR multilingual keyboard. The secondary layer characters of the ID 445 keyboard can be printed using either the left or the right Ctrl key.
Manufacturing Refresh 6 contains fixes for APARs and internal defects.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications supports TLS 1.1 security protocol. This is supported by both IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) and Microsoft CryptoAPI (MSCAPI).
The Security Protocol drop-down box on the Security Setup tab now enables you to select - TLS1.1, TLS1.0, or SSL only - as the security protocol for a session. If the host does not support the selected security protocol, Personal Communications will drop down to the next lower level of security protocol, and continue negotiations to establish a secure session. For example, if TLS1.1 is chosen from the Security Protocol drop-down box, and the host supports only up to TLS1.0, then the negotiation is carried out at TLS1.0.
FIPS mode is supported by both TLS1.1 and TLS1.0.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications supports TLS 1.2 security protocol. This is supported by both IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) and Microsoft CryptoAPI (MSCAPI).
The Security Protocol drop-down box on the Security Setup tab now enables you to select - TLS1.2, TLS1.1, TLS1.0, or SSL only - as the security protocol for a session. If the host does not support the selected security protocol, Personal Communications will drop down to the next lower level of security protocol, and continue negotiations to establish a secure session. For example, if TLS1.2 is chosen from the Security Protocol drop-down box, and the host supports only up to TLS1.0, then the negotiation is carried out at TLS1.0.
FIPS mode is supported by TLS1.2, TLS1.1 and TLS1.0.
A new keyword enables you to disable the Quick Connect bar for a user session. The keyword is DisableQCB and is located under the Session section of the pcswin.ini file. Setting its value to Y disables the Quick Connect bar for the entire user session.
Below is an example of how to use this keyword in the pcswin.ini file:
[Profile] ID=INI Version=6 [Session] DisableQCB=Y ........ ........
With this release, IBM Personal Communications supports Microsoft Windows 8. IBM SNA protocols are supported only under 32-bit operating environments.
The IBM Global Security library is upgraded to 8.0.50.17.
In a bidirectional installation, the FTP Client has a new text field added to hold Logical Record Length under the Bidirectional Options section of the Session Configuration panel.
Manufacturing Refresh 11 contains fixes for APARS and internal defects.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications does not support SSLv3 security protocol anymore. This is due to the security vulnerability in SSLv3 that has been referred to as Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption (POODLE) attack. For more information, please refer to the Security Bulletin at:
The Security Protocol drop-down box on the Security Setup tab no longer lists SSL only as the security protocol. The lowest level of security protocol, Personal Communications can drop down to, during the negotiation is TLS1.0.
Manufacturing Refresh 13 contains fixes for APARS and internal defects.
The IBM Global Security library is upgraded to 8.0.50.41.
This upgraded version of GSKit addresses a security vulnerability called "FREAK: Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT keys" TLS/SSL client and server vulnerability. For more information, please refer to the Security Bulletin at:
The IBM Global Security library is upgraded to 8.0.50.42.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications enables FIPS processing mode by default. Option to control FIPS processing mode has been disabled. This change has been made to protect against security vulnerability in RC4 stream cipher, also commonly referred to as "Bar Mitzvah Attack". For more information, please refer to the Security Bulletin at:
The IBM Global Security library is upgraded to 8.0.50.47.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications (Traditional Chinese installations) supports Host Code Page 1377 - Hong Kong T-Chinese Mixed Host HKSCS. The "Host Code-Page" drop-down in the "Session Parameters" dialog has a new entry added - "1377 - HongKong-SCS".
PDT mode printing is not supported under this host code page.
Support for TLS 1.2 was announced through IBM Personal Communications 6.0 MR 8. However, secure session would not connect when MSCAPI was chosen as the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP). With this release, the problem has been addressed.
With this release, following WS keywords have been provided to enable an IBM Personal Communications emulator session to fail over from the Primay host to the Backup 1 and Backup 2 hosts, when Auto-reconnect is configured. Both keywords are part of the Session section, and are valid for the TN3270, TN5250, and VT connections.
[Session]
SwitchToNextHostOnAutoReconnect=Y
The SwitchToNextHostOnAutoReconnect keyword is effective only when Auto-reconnect is enabled.
The default value is N.
[Session]
AutoReconnectRetries=10
The AutoReconnectRetries keyword is effective only when the SwitchToNextHostOnAutoReconnect keyword is set to Y.
The default value is 0. Valid range for this keyword is 0 to 99.
If the keyword is set to 0, it indicates that the retry attempt is unlimited, and fail over does not take place.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications (Traditional Chinese installations) supports Host Code Page 1379 - Tranditional Chinese Extended Mixed Host (Growing). The Host Code-Page drop-down in the Session Parameters dialog box has a new entry added - 1379 HongKong-CP1379.
PDT mode printing is not supported under this host code page.
To enable a display session to invoke an associated printer session in hidden mode, set the following keyword in the .WS profile of the display session:
[Session]
AssociatedPrinterStartHidden=Y
The default value of the keyword is N.
Following INI keywords have been provided to enable or disable IBM Personal Communications emulator sessions from sending the MAC Address and machine name to the HI License Manager Server. The keywords are part of the Licnese section of the PCSWIN.INI file.
[License]
enableMacAddress = N
enableMachineName = Y
When enableMacAddress is set to N, the license manager server log shows MAC_ADDRESS_DISABLED under the MAC ADDRESS column. The default value of the keyword is N.
When enableMachineName is set to N, the license manager server log shows MACHINE_NAME_DISABLED under the MACHINE NAME column. The default value of the keyword is Y.
For more details on Host Integration License Manager, refer to the technote How to install and configure the License Manager Server for Host On-Demand and Personal Communications.
The IBM Global Security library is upgraded to 8.0.50.66.
Manufacturing Refresh 18 contains fixes for APARS and internal defects.
With this release, IBM Personal Communications will support both HTTPS and HTTP connections to the License Manager.
In an intranet environment, when a License Manager Server is configured with local Certificate Authorities, the HTTPS connectivity from PCOMM client to the license manager may fail, due to failure in verifying the certificates received from the license manager. Following pcswin.ini keywords have been introduced to ignore these scenarios arising out of such a situation:
[License]
IgnoreUnknownCA=Y
IgnoreInvalidCertCN=Y
IgnoreCertRevCheck=Y
When IgnoreUnknownCA is set to Y, it allows an invalid certificate authority. This allows PCOMM to send License information even when the License Manager Server sends an untrusted CA. This setting is recommended only under test environments. The default value of the keyword is N.
When IgnoreInvalidCertCN is set to Y, it allows an invalid common name in a certificate; that is, the server name specified by the application does not match the common name in the certificate. This setting is recommended only under test environments. The default value of the keyword is N.
When IgnoreCertRevCheck is set to Y, it ignores certificate revocation problems. This allows PCOMM to send License information even when it could not verify whether the host certificate is valid or revoked. This setting is recommended only under test environments. The default value of the keyword is N.
Please note that these keywords are recommended only under test environments.
For more details on Host Integration License Manager, refer to the technote How to install and configure the License Manager Server for Host On-Demand and Personal Communications.