IBM Personal Communications Version 5.9 for Windows operating systems
First Edition
This document contains information supplementary to the online help and the publications, including newly added functions, hints, tips, restrictions, and corrections. See the Personal Communications Information Center for other considerations when using Personal Communications Version 5.9, and for complete product documentation.
For information on installing IBM Personal Communications for Windows, refer to the CD-ROM Guide to Installation document. Refer to Quick Beginnings for information about the new features and functionality of Version 5.9.
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 5.9.
Windows x64 platform support
Page Header and Footer
Windows print driver for VT host printing
Concurrent IPv4 and IPv6 connections for EEDLC
Policy enhancements to modify session view
Policy enhancements to restrict control of session window
Collect print jobs for 5250 printer sessions
Enhanced trace buffers
Best Fit option in Page Setup
Kerberos-based logon automation
Telnet-negotiated security
IBM Support Assistant
ITLM Readiness
Traditional
Chinese UDC range modification
Override German and Austrian keyboard Shift Lock behavior for numeric keys
Environment
variables in workstation profile
Modify conversion table for Japanese code pages 1390 and 1399
Package information in About dialog
Disable
STRPCCMD command support
Subscribing to Support News
IBM Support Assistant
Using Personal Communications with Windows Firewall on XP Service Pack 2
Installing or migrating Personal Communications with Communications Server
Displaying Arabic data in the VBHLLAPI sample program
Personal Communications Version 5.9 is based on the popular Personal Communications Version 5.8. If you are familiar with Personal Communications Version 5.8, you might want to review the following new functions and enhancements.
Personal Communications Version 5.9 provides non-SNA platform support for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition and Enterprise x64 Edition.
You can add a header or footer to printed pages on print screen and print screen collection jobs.
Refer to Emulator User's Reference for details about this feature.
For EEDLC, you can configure and run IPv4 and IPv6 connections concurrently.
By editing the Windows group policy, you can hide the session window tool bar, menu bar, and expanded OIA.
Refer to the Administrator's Guide and Reference for more information about modifying the View policy.
By editing the Windows group policy, you can restrict the user's ability to maximize, minimize, or close session windows.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for more information about modifying the Execution policy.
This feature enables you to collect print jobs and print them as a single job or in a group. Functions associated with this feature can be mapped to the keyboard, popup keypad, mouse button, or toolbar button.
Refer to Emulator User's Reference for details about this feature.
Additional CSTrace buffers are provided, so that all trace records are captured during heavy trace loads.
You can enable Best Fit print scaling using a check box in the Page Setup dialog. This feature is enabled for the following sessions:
Refer to Emulator User's Reference for details about this feature.
For 5250 display and Data Transfer sessions, this feature provides automatic signon capability to hosts, using logged-on user credentials.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for details about this feature.
Telnet-negotiated security is an extension to Telnet that enables TLS to be negotiated over a Telnet connection. You can configure Telnet-negotiated security for 3270 display and printer sessions.
Telnet-negotiated security supports the TLS Protocol Version 1.0. This protocol allows security negotiation from TLS 1.0 to SSL 3.0 for servers that do not support TLS 1.0.
Security with the Telnet-negotiated option
When configuring a session, you can select the Telnet-negotiated option after selecting Enable Security. If Enable Security and Telnet-negotiated are both checked, a TLS connection is negotiated after the normal Telnet connection is established. However, the 3270 session will not start until the TLS negotiation completes successfully. If the server does not support TLS-based Telnet security, the session will not start, and an error message will be issued.
If you deselect Enable Security, the Telnet negotiation process is disabled. If security is not enabled and the server requests a TLS-based Telnet Security session from the client, the Personal Communications cannot start a TLS-based Telnet Security session. An error message is then issued.
Security without the Telnet-negotiated option
If Enable Security is selected and Telnet-negotiated is not enabled, TLS negotiations are done on a TLS connection with the server. This is the default state, because Telnet servers do not typically support TLS-based Telnet security.
Note: If you have previous enabled Telnet-negotiated security and want to disable the option, you must select the Enable Security option in order to access the Telnet-negotiated check box.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for details about security for Personal Communications.
The IBM Support Assistant enables you to easily resolve software questions. See Support Assistant for details.
This feature enables installation and usage detection of Personal Communications using the IBM Tivoli License Manager.
For Traditional Chinese, you can set a keyword to change the PC UDC range from 0x8181--0x8C82 to 0xC6A1--0xC8F1 and map to EBCDIC code 0xEOEB--0xE2FD. Set the keyword as follows:
[Translation] NewUDCRangeCHT=Y
For German and Austrian keyboards, you can specify a keyword that overrides the default behavior of numeric keys in Shift Lock mode. The syntax is as follows:
[Keyboard] ShiftlockOverride=Y
When this keyword is enabled, the numeric keys will return the corresponding numeral, instead of the symbol associated with the key. This behavior is the same as that in Caps Lock mode.
Note: In order to use this functionality, you must specify German (IBM) as the keyboard layout in the Windows Regional settings.
In the .WS profile, you can specify environment variables for the paths of the following Personal Communications files:
The syntax is as follows:
[Toolbar] BarFile=C:\%USERDIR%\disp.bar
[Poppad] DefaultPoppad=C:\%PROFILEDIR%\test.pmp
[Mouse] DefaultMouse=%PCOMMPROFILE%\vtpf.mmp
[Keyboard} DefaultKeyboard=C:\%USERFOLDER%UserMap.kmp
In the above examples, USERDIR, PROFILEDIR, PCOMMPROFILE, and USERFOLDER are environment variables that you specify. See the following example:
USERDIR = profile\toolbarfiles
The default Personal Communications conversion table for Japanese code pages 1390 and 1399 differs from the table used by IBM WebSphere Host On-Demand. The following .WS profile keyword enables you to use the same conversion table as Host On-Demand.
[Translation] UsePcomCDRA1399=N
The following table shows the mapping differences between the default Personal Communications conversion table (keyword UsePcomCDRA1399=Y or value is not specified) and the Host On-Demand table (keyword is set to N).
| EBCDIC code point | Default Personal Communications Unicode value | Unicode value when UsePcomCDRA1399=N |
|---|---|---|
| 0x4260 | U+2212 (minus symbol) | U+FF0D (full width hyphen-minus) |
| 0x43A1 | U+301C (wave dash) | U+FF5E (full width tilde) |
| 0x447C | U+2016 (double vertical line) | U+2225 (parallel to) |
| 0x444A | U+2014 (em dash) | U+2015 (horizontal bar) |
| 0x426A | U+00A6 (broken bar) | U+FFE4 (full width broken bar) |
| 0xE9F3 | U+FF0D (full width hyphen-minus) | U+2212 (minus symbol) |
| 0xE9F4 | U+FF5E (full width tilde) | U+301C (wave dash) |
| 0xDFE5 | U+2225 (parallel to) | U+2016 (double vertical line) |
| 0xDDB7 | U+2015 (horizontal bar) | U+2014 (em dash) |
| 0xE9F5 | U+FFE4 (full width broken bar) | U+00A6 (broken bar) |
You can view the language of the installed package by selecting Help > About Personal Communications from the session menu bar. The language indicators are as follows:
You can disable STRPCCMD command support by using the following . WS keyword:
[5250] Ignore_STRPCCMD=Y
If the keyword is set to N or is not specified,
STRPCCMD will remain enabled.
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You can find documentation and links to other resources at the Personal Communications Information Center, at the following address:
The Japanese Information Center also contains FAQs and troubleshooting tips.
The single Personal Communications Information Center address 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.
To receive Personal Communications support news flashes, complete the following steps:
http://www.ibm.com/software/network/pcomm/support
The IBM Support Assistant enables you to easily resolve software questions. The Support Assistant provides 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
Both IPv4 and IPv6 EEDLC packets are blocked by the Windows Firewall feature
included in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2.
To enable the EEDLC
connection, the EEDLC standard UDP ports (numbers 12000 to 12004) must be
added to the Windows Firewall exception list. You can use any of the following
methods to add the ports.
Use the following commands to add each port:
netsh firewall set portopening UDP 12000 Udp_12000_EEDLC netsh firewall set portopening UDP 12001 Udp_12001_EEDLC netsh firewall set portopening UDP 12002 Udp_12002_EEDLC netsh firewall set portopening UDP 12003 Udp_12003_EEDLC netsh firewall set portopening UDP 12004 Udp_12004_EEDLC
After you add the ports, the Windows Firewall window exception dropdown list
shows the new UDP port numbers.
For additional details about the
Windows Firewall, refer to the Microsoft Developer Network database at the
following address:
This feature differs from the IPV6 filtering behavior of Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) in Windows XP releases prior to SP2. For more information about using Personal Communications with ICF, refer to Technote 1176310 at the Personal Communications support Web site. You can find a link to the support Web site from the Personal Communications Information Center, as well as other resources.
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.
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