A1.1 dataComet & dataComet-Secure X Release Notes ________________________________________________________________ dataComet documentation. (Rev. 2/6/10) Copyright 1995, 2010 databeast, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This document has information on (select and use "Find..." to go to the section): Known Bugs in the current version Release Notes: dataComet-X for OS X: 10.1.1 10.0.6 10.0.5 10.0.4 10.0.3 10.0.2 dataComet-Secure X for OS X: 10.1.1 10.1.0 10.0.6 10.0.5 10.0.4 10.0.3 10.0.2 10.0.1 10.0.0 10.0.0b4 10.0.0b3 10.0.0b2 10.0.0b1 ___________________________________________________ 10.1.1 -Secure 6/21/08 10.1.1 -X ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * Dramatically improved the screen drawing speed when text antialiasing is in effect. Also fixed a bug where antialiasing was not correctly initialized; if a session had not been opened in which anti-aliasing was NOT in effect, the font for a session with antialiasing would not be imaged correctly, resulting in an ugly appearance. * Fixed a bug in the SSH Configuration "Keys..." dialog which would cause the application to hang if there was a previously selected Key file which was no longer present. * Reverted to requiring holding down the Option key to resize the emulator rows/columns size to avoid distorting displays for applications which can't handle resize operations. ___________________________________________________ 10.1.0 -Secure 4/27/08 ___________________________________________________ Features: * Added support for Telnet/TN3270 SSL/TLS secure connections. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.6 -Secure 3/31/08 10.0.6 -X ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * Fixed a VT100 bug which sometimes manifested itself in the OpenVMS EVE editor, occasionally causing "Command" to appear in a text area when the DO key was pressed and the SPLIT WINDOW command was in effect. * Fixed VT100 stream printing so Tabs are expanded. * Fixed cursor selection in emulator windows so selections are offset properly; 10.0.5 introduced a bug which shifted the start of the selection range. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.5 -Secure 3/1/08 10.0.5 -X ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * Fixed a bug which prevented the macro buttons from working under OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Features: * The macro buttons can now be displayed or hidden independently of the prompt area of the emulator screen (using the "Views" Preferences panel). ___________________________________________________ 10.0.4 -Secure 2/19/08 10.0.4 -X ___________________________________________________ Features: * Support for anti-aliasing has been added; by default the "Global" Preferences panel has anti-aliasing enabled for all windows with the font size set to a size greater than 12 points. * Shell session performance has been enhanced. * Added "Hide all session .edit windows" option in the "Global" Preferences panel to enable users who don't wish to use .edit windows to hide them on a global basis. * Emulator windows are now resized without holding down the Option key, and the modeless configuration dialogs are now promptly updated to reflect the new window size. * The "Control Font" and the "Define Macro..." dialog font size is now set at 12 points to improve legibility on high-density displays. * Added a "Require session close from host" configuration option in the "Session" Preferences panel so user can't close a session without first closing the session on the host. * Emulator windows now hide the macro buttons if the "Views" Preferences panel option "Show buttons at top of window" is off. * Added an "Add Macro Button..." menu item to make adding macros to emulator windows more intuitive. * The default TEXT and BIN creators are now '????' rather than '3278' so TextEdit (or other user selected editor) opens documents. * dataComet and dataComet-Secure are now built using Apple's Xcode development system. Bug Fixes: * Fixed a bug in display handling code which could cause crashes. * Fixed vulnerabilities identified in SSH1 RSA encryption and SSH2 which could allow Man-In-The-Middle attacks. * Fixed several SCP file transfer bugs: - SCP uploads over SSH2 connections no longer cause a crash when the file is larger than 120K. - SCP uploads of large files over encrypted Kerberos connections no longer suffer from file corruption due to repeated encryption of the same block of data. - SCP now works correctly when uploading a text file with line Wrap enabled. - SCP now works over Shell connections to remote hosts using OS X's built-in SSH client. * Enabled Control-C as interrupt character for Shell sessions. * Fixed URL handling so "telnet:" and "tn3270:" URLs open a Telnet session and an "ssh:" URL opens an SSH session. To help enable AppleScript control of sessions, URL sessions no longer present "Save session configuration" dialogs when they are closed. * Removed alert that was presented on execution of "Connection" macro for Shell. * Fixed a bug which limited pastes imported from other applications to 32K. * Enabled editing and execution of macro buttons when connection is closed. * The "Option is Meta Key" option in the "VT100" Preferences panel now works correctly when the "dataComet Keyboard" is installed. * "Views" show packet counter options now work interactively. * Fixed problems with VT100 screen display areas appearing inverted when a variable-width font was selected and color mapping was off. * Fixed bugs in VT100 screen display when "Background Color Erase" mode was selected when characters were deleted or inserted and color mapping was off. * The "Word Count" window now displays the correct value for the words and lines in a selection. * The user beep sound now plays when emwindow is front window. * Applications can now be selected when the "TEXT App" and "BIN App" buttons are pressed in the "Transfer" Preferences panel. * File transfer extensions such as ".txt" are no longer added to file names when they are already present in the file name. * Fixed the "TEXT suffix" field in the "Transfer" Preferences panel so it is blanked correctly when it has not been entered (it was not being blanked when switching to a session for which it had been entered and then back to a session for which it has not been entered). * Printing text with characters from extended character sets in a text window no longer results in wrong characters appearing due to unnecessary character translation. * Fixed position of page number so it is centered correctly when printing. * The "Host Name" menu item in Telnet & SSH menus is now the host name rather than window name. * Fixed "Save Text as..." dialog so new session.edit window saved in Sessions folder by default. * Selecting a minimized dataComet document now activates the window. * The top window is now re-activated correctly after "Replace" option used when "Save configuration..." dialog is executed. * A new Shell document now comes up with window size and print font size set to the size selected for the "Comet Default" document. * The IBM 3270 "Attn" command now sends a Telnet "Break" command rather than a Telnet "Interrupt" command. * Changed IND$FILE file transfer dialogs so '.' is not translated into '¥' when download host file names are converted to Macintosh file names. Fixed the IND$FILE file transfer dialog so it no longer automatically sets the filename when a mouse click is used to select the file name text field (tabbing into the file name field still sets the file name automatically). * File transfer no longer aborts a file launch when "AutoLaunch" is set and the original file creator cannot be found, since Launch Services can launch alternate applications without the original file creator application being present. * Fixes to the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog: - Switching between SSH & Telnet connections now works without closing the emulator window. - An alert is posted immediately when when attempting to change Session bype while connected. - Shell reconfiguration can be performed while connected. - You can now reconfigure open Shell sessions without getting an error message. - The "Telnet Configuration..." dialog now sets Authentication and Encryption checkboxes correctly when it is brought up. * Fixes to the "Define Macro..." dialog: - Fixed a bug which could leave menu items disabled when a new text document was opened while the "Define Macro..." dialog was active. - Fixed the "Define Macro..." dialog so clicking twice on the menu bar dismisses menu rather the resulting in additional menu drop-down display. - Macro dialogs were not handling Minimize properly; now they won't minimize when a macro is selected. - Changed "Show all" macro text display so user not prompted to save dumped macros when closing window. - Menus are no longer disabled after cancelling Save for new text window when in Macro dialog. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.3 -Secure 10/05/04 10.0.3 -X ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * Fixed a bug occurring with CopyPaste where a "v" would appear in the emulator window when attempting to execute a Paste command. * The macro buttons at the top of the emulator screen are now rearranged when the window size is changed so they wrap at the right edge of the window. * All files are now enabled in the Open File dialogs used by the "Open...", "Type file name at cursor" and Edit menu "Append file to .edit window" menu commands and the Transfer menu "Text App", "Bin App", and "Bin Type" buttons. You can now set the Transfer dialog "Text App", "Bin App", and "Bin Type" file creator and types by entering text manually. (Applications are not enabled in the Open File dialog, which makes it more difficult to use the Transfer dialog file type/creator buttons; entering the types manually may also be necessary since under OS X some applications don't set the Macintosh file type or creator when they create files.) * The emulator screen clipping is now set correctly when the emulator window is smaller than the size of the emulator area; this bug would cause the vertical scrollbar to be overdrawn. * 9, 12, and 16 are now underlined in the "Size" menu to highlight the available bitmap font sizes supplied with dataComet; these may give you more readable text than TrueType fonts at these sizes. * Fixed a bug which caused IND$FILE configuration settings, e.g., TSO Host transfer type, to be ignored. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.2 -Secure 3/9/04 10.0.2 -X ___________________________________________________ Features: * Beta versions of TrueType fonts are included in this distribution to support printing of the special character sets under Mac OS X in addition to allowing larger font sizes in emulator displays. (The old Comet-fonts, which are currently implemented as bitmap fonts ('NFNT' resources), unfortunately cannot be printed under Mac OS X; pages containing these characters would fail to print.) Bug Fixes: * The Window menu "Bring All to Front" can now be recorded in a macro; likewise the "Quit" command will be recorded and executed correctly in macros. * Fixed the function-key handling code so that the PowerBook "fn" function key will produce Shift-Function PF keys. (Unfortunately Apple's latest updates do not support detection of the Option and Control keys when used with the "fn" key.) * Fixed a bug which could cause pasting over 16K of text into an emulator window to hang a session. * Fixed the IBM menu so the IBM Select Cursor menu item will work when it is selected. * When 8-bit control sequences are selected in the VT100/VT220 emulator, sending CSI[ (0x9b-[) will now work even though the additional '[' is redundant. * Fixed ZModem transfers so that the host flag to convert newlines to the native host newline is set when a file being uploaded is not a binary file (according to the flags set in Internet Config). This should fix problems uploading text files to VMS hosts. "Configure Terminal Session" fixes: * If the Control menu "Lock" item is disabled (for kiosk applications) or the Master Password dialog is cancelled the password entered in the "Configure Terminal Session" will now work as expected. It will NOT be stored in the session configuration, but will be used for the first login attempt for an SSH or Kerberos session. * Fixed the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog so that if you have your Global configuration set to open it on launch, and then change the Host Address field, the modified address will be used. * Fixed so leaving the hostname empty will yield your own machine's IP address so it will open a session to itself. This worked in Classic dataComet but was failing under OS X. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.1 -Secure 4/21/03 ___________________________________________________ PLEASE UPGRADE TO THIS VERSION IF YOU ARE USING dataComet-Secure 10.0.0! This version improves handling of several SSH security related problems! Features: * Added support for mouse wheel events; holding down the Option key while wheeling will scroll by pages. * The "Comet Default" document now appears first in the list of documents in the File->Sessions submenu to make it easier to open and modify the default session configuration. (This is especially useful for defining the default session document buttons and macros which will appear in a New Shell.) * Added support for 16-color colormaps for VT100 series emulators ("Use 16 colors" in the "Color" Preferences pane). * The option "VT100-wrap (wrap at column 81)" has been added to the "VT100" preferences panel to allow you to disable the VT100 line-feed glitch. * The "dataComet Keyboard.rsrc" has been added to the distribution to allow elimination of dead-key remapping (works only with OS X 10.2 or later). Also, when the "Option is Meta Key" option is selected in the "VT100" Preferences Pane, the keymapping now works in a more intuitive way (Option == Meta, Shift-Option == Shift-Meta, Control-Option == Meta-Control). * Added new dataComet Launch macro features to improve kiosk functionality under OS X; see Help document "A4. dataComet Kiosk Configuration". Using the "!\000\196" macro to disable the dataComet-Secure menu "Preferences..." command now works correctly; disabling the "New -> Shell" submenu item will disable local Shell connections. Bug Fixes: * Addressed problems related to the CERT¨ Advisory CA-2002-36 "Multiple Vulnerabilities in SSH Implementations" (described at and ). These might have allowed a cracker to cause dataComet-Secure to crash when attempting to open an SSH2 connection (to a host address controlled, or feigned, by the attacker). * Added a dialog which allows users to skip connection macro execution for local sessions (whether PTY or SSH->self). This helps plug a major security hole, since a hostile systems cracker might induce you to download and execute a dataComet Shell session document containing a noxious shell script embedded in the Connection Macro. NOTE that Apple's Terminal application will perform similar shell-scripting functions using ".term" and ".command" files, and this is a serious weakness! (The only way known to me to avoid this vulnerability with Terminal is to disable the Terminal application by removing the ".app" suffix or deleting it.) * Avoided NULL pointer dereferences which could cause dataComet to crash under some circumstances when a session document is opened, or the "Open "Comet Default" automatically on launch" option was enabled (in the "Global" Preferences pane). * Fixed so "Comet Default" will load previously saved "Comet Default.edit" window text when opened automatically on launch. * Fixed a crash which occurred under OS X 10.2 when opening a session document saved with an empty "Connect to:" field in the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog. * Fixed Telnet and SSH connection handling so that connections are made asynchronously, and the "Reopen session automatically on failure" option (in the "Session" Preferences panel) works correctly. SSH disconnects due to session failures are now reported without triggering a dialog box requiring a user response. * The default connection type is now a local Shell connection. New Shell connections now include any buttons or key macros defined in the "Comet Default" session. * Fixed the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog so that renaming the session to clone a new session will properly copy all the macros and resources associated with the previously defined session document. * Emulator handling of very long files (e.g., "cat /usr/share/dict/words") has been fixed so performance no longer bogs down abysmally when scrollback buffering is enabled. * Fixed XModem transfers so that they will work! (A bug in the filename dialog was causing transfer cancellations.) ___________________________________________________ 10.0.0 -Secure 1/31/03 ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * The time and packet counter displays have been expanded to display uptimes longer than a month ... * The File menu New -> Clone menu item has been fixed so selecting the menu item directly works. * SCP file uploads now update the progress dialog promptly. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.0b4 -Secure 10/1/02 ___________________________________________________ Features: * Serial connections are now supported. * Drag and Drop is now suppported. Bug Fixes: * Fixed a 3270 emulator bug in handling the Start Field command which could cause a crash due to dereferencing a NULL pointer. * Fixed a crash which could occur when a session is opened from a session document (SetPortRGBForeColor() was called with a NULL colormap pointer). * Fixed the Control menu "Internet Config" command so it no longer causes crashes under OS X 10.2. (It now attempts to specifically open the file mapping panel; note that unfortunately user-configurable file mapping is only supported through Internet Explorer under OS X... but maybe someday this deficiency will be remedied.) * Pastes into the "Set Registration..." and other dialogs have been fixed so they will use the updated scrap when switching in from another application. * Fixed the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog Authenticate "(Alt. ID)" field so that it will correctly send the string as an alternate user login name when making a Kerberos connection. * The "Save Configuration..." dialog has been fixed so sessions now saved to the dataComet "Sessions" Folder by default. * Window controls are now deactivated when the window (or dialog) is in the background. * The buttons in the top of the emulator window have been changed from round to bevel buttons to save space and look a little less distracting. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.0b3 -Secure 9/3/02 ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * Fixed a crash which occurred when a "New" session was created with PC-ANSI or SCO-ANSI selected. * Fixed a crash which could occur in SCP binary file transfers. * Fixed crashes which occur under 10.2 (Jaguar) due to failure of calls previously included in the OS X System which have been omitted in 10.2 (specifically the tgetent() terminal capability call and the krb5_free_kdc_rep() Kerberos call). The "Default Folder X" extension also triggers this crash by forcing the linker to attempt to resolve all call references. * Anti-aliasing is now disabled. (Per-session control of antialiasing will be added in a future release.) * Fixed selection handling overflow problem, so selections in emulator scrollback buffers longer than 32,767 lines will be displayed and copied properly. * Registered copies of dataComet now work correctly when accessed by users who have read-only access to the application. * Documents which are only available to the user with read-only permissions can now be opened using dataComet. * Copy and Paste functions have been fixed so the same scrap is used by both the emulator windows and edit/dialog windows. This caused failures to update the scrap correctly when copying and pasting between the two. * The "SOCKS proxy" address in the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog is now saved correctly in session documents when the "Global" option is not selected. * To avoid printing failures where "nothing happens", bitmapped fonts (such as the Comet-fonts) are now remapped to Courier when printing. * The VT220 delete character and insert character functions have been fixed so they handle Background Color Erase mode correctly. * The SCP and IND$FILE transfer dialog boxes are now drawn completely when an upload command is selected. * Fixed a loop which occurred if an arrow key was pressed in an emulator after the "!W>\000" macro had been executed to direct input from the .edit window into the emulator window. * Added "!Ex" macro to clear scrap (replacing obsolete "!cC" macro). * Button control sizing was fixed so that no visual artifacts appear when they are drawn under 10.2. * The interpretation of internet addresses and domain names in the "Configure Terminal Session" dialog have been changed so Brown TN3270 document "hostaddr::socket" notation is supported. * The cursor position report is now updated when a selection is being made in an emulator window (this option is controlled by "Preferences/Views/Use mouse position"). ___________________________________________________ 10.0.0b2 -Secure 8/13/02 ___________________________________________________ Bug Fixes: * The Enter key on the keypad now sends an IBM 3270 Enter rather than doing nothing when IBM 3270 emulation is selected. ___________________________________________________ 10.0.0b1 -Secure 8/5/02 ___________________________________________________ Features: Version X runs under Mac OS X as a native Mach-O Carbon application. Local Shell Terminal sessions are supported as well as Telnet/TN3270 and SSH1/SSH2 connections. In general X is similar to previous versions of dataComet-Secure, though some minor changes have been made in appearance and menu arrangement. BUG NOTES: * Note that printing with Comet fonts will probably fail to produce any output, since the system no longer supports printing of fonts provided as 'NFNT' bitmap font resources. Printing emulator screens containing VT100 graphics or other special graphics characters may prove problematic. Versions of these fonts will eventually be made available in a format that will be supported under OS X. * Support for direct access to Serial ports under OS X is not yet supported. ________________________________________________________________