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Glink Professional Edition Release 7.2 is available

The release has been installed on our web site and is available for download and test by anyone giving us reasonable information as to who they are, and a valid e-mail address for the trial license.

Our distributors can download from the usual places.

Previous major release 7.1 | Glink information pages | Product sheet | Brochure

Release number

This release, 7.2.0. is the first production version of R7.2. It is a new version that contains significant new functionality as compared to the R7.1 release.

Glink Enterprise Edition

This release contains a completely new edition, Glink Enterprise Edition which is licensed by number of simultaneous sessions and allows use of Glink from the web. A Glink license server must be set up to issue session licenses.

Glink from the web

Glink Enterprise Edition includes the Glink web mode feature, which web-enables core business applications, making them available to end-users having only a standard browser installed on the desktop. Glink web mode requires no changes to the mainframe applications, and no installation of workstation software other than the browser.

The Enterprise Edition also includes web controlled workstation mode, allowing you to choose between running Glink on a web server with a browser interface, or running Glink on the workstation, installed by, and under control of, a web server.

The Enterprise Edition includes a working demo of Glink in both web controlled mode (in a window) and web mode (in a browser). These demos illustrate the ease of use and simplicity of configuration when implementing Glink in web, or web controlled, mode.

Glink license server

The Enterprise edition requires a Glink license server for issuing session licenses. The server can be setup to run as a service or run as a foreground process on the desktop. A monitor program is also supplied to display relevant status information.

GlinkApi COM+ server

Both the Professional and Enterprise editions of Glink include a new thin-client version of the GlinkApi COM+ object. This version of the API is a multi-threaded out-of-process COM+ server designed for client and server application use. All the user interface has been stripped out, optimising the object and minimizing the footprint. This new object is automatically registered when you install Glink and can be created using the GlinkApi.GlinkApi class name. The normal Glink.GlinkApi objects can still be created, in which case a standard Glink will be started.

The Professional Edition of the GlinkApi COM+ object is restricted for development of small-scale client or server-side applications. Support of many simultaneous sessions in a production environment requires an Enterprise Edition license.

SSH

A new SSH comms interface has been added for communication with SSHD daemons. This interface integrates the freeware utility called PuTTY into Glink. The software is distributed under the MIT licence.

Security

Restricted user /R command line options have been added to disable settings and other menus, configuration options, script startup, dial directory, file transfer, toggles and the DSA host connection menu.

Use of the administrator /K option is now reserved for users with administrator privileges.

All modules delivered in this release are now digitally signed by G&R. Right clicking any executable and choosing Properties->Digital Signature should show a Thawte certificate issued to 'Gallagher And Robertson AS'. If this is not present then you are using a version that has been modified and should contact your distributor to ensure that you have the correct files.

Codepage and language support

Codepage options for Windows fonts has been added. This provides support not only for Latin-2 and Greek but also a number of others, for example Codepage 1250 (Eastern Europe), 1251 (Russian), 1253 (Greek), 1255 ( Turkish), 1257 (Baltic), 1258 (Vietnamese), 874 (Thai), 932 (Shift-JIS) character sets. Codepage support requires installation of NLS before use.

Support for Japanese Shift-JIS is enabled using dual-byte encoding from the host.

The clipboard interface supports Unicode format for correct transfer.

Script enhancements

• A new facility has been added, learn mode. This allows you to do a simple record of your interaction with the host, and save this as a script file for future use. The facility is accessed either through a new default button on the toolbar or through the edit menu.
• The script TRACE command has been enhanced. When this command is used, a separate window will open when the script is executed, showing the contents of the script file and highlighting each line of the script as it executes.
• Support for Unicode script files, Windows routines are used to internally convert to the currently active codepage before use.
• Support for LF-delimited script files has been added.
• New 'keys' MLDBL, MRDBL and MMDBL have been introduced in order that double clicks may be trapped by the script ON KEY command. Note that this will function only when the corresponding single click is also trapped by the script.

Ggate enhancements

A new dialog between Ggate and Glink gives a list of available Ggate coname and parameters configured on server now visible in the DSA/DIWS Host configuration dialogbox for each Ggate coname. Note, this new feature requires G&R Host Links 6.1.1.

New models have been added for Ggate that allow for fully transparent eight bit communication, the DKU9107 and VIP9800 models. This removes requirement for SS2 usage on DKU. Note that upgrading the software at the host end will be necessary for these models to be available.

Emulation enhancements

The IBM 5250 emulation has more options to control AS/400 error message states. These include allowing any command key to reset the error state, displaying the error messages in the status bar and suppressing the status line.

Basic configuration enhancements

• Command line options can be put in a .glink file and used as a shortcut or a URL to start Glink, e.g.: http://myweb.com/glink/startup.web/myhost.glink
• The GLINK.INI file, used for specifying default command line options, can now be placed in the Glink directory and will be read by both Glink and the GlinkApi server.
• The standalone GLKEY console utility program has been replaced with GUI transliteration table configuration directly from the keyboard options dialog.
• You may now specify multiple IP addresses for all hosts. Glink will connect to these sequentially until a successful connect is made. This applies also to the alternate address for Ggate connections.
• Marked rectangles can now be configured to include trailing spaces when copying them to the clipboard.
• If the emulation mode permits it, you can now paste data as a block at the current cursor position.
• An option has been provided to enable numeric checking for DKU input fields using the same limits as does the Wincom emulator.
• TNVIP wait for message rather than turn, fixes problems with 'bad' TNVIP server.

Other enhancements

• This release has been qualified for use with the Windows 2003 Server family of operating systems.
• All the necessary enhancements have been added to Glink to make it Windows XP compliant changing the visual aspects of dialog boxes and controls.
• Generic FTP/HTTP access for all files, basically any file referenced by Glink can be accessed using ftp://, http:// or https://
• The Enterprise Edition includes a packaging tool called GLPACK that allows you to customize the single file setup delivery package. The License upgrade dialogbox has now been enhanced. Licenses delivered electronically can be pasted directly.
• If the PDF documentation files are available a viewer program allows access either directly to installed files or to the files on a CD.
• The Glink setup program is now a self-extracting, self-installing package and can include multilingual packages. The package can be customized with the GLPACK utility.
• Right mouse double click marks line, as well as current left double click for word.
• Full Latin-2 support using SS2 has been added for DKU emulations.
• The debug mode option available from the File menu and toolbar has been changed and will now display a debug window corresponding the the /J debug window. Debugging options have also been added to its menu, see new /J command line options for details.

GlinkFTP

• All the necessary enhancements have been added to GlinkFTP to make it Windows XP compliant. This allows all the Windows XP look-and-feel options to be enabled.
• GlinkFTP now includes context-sensitive online help.
• The default start directory is now the %HOMEDRIVE% directory rather than the My Computer drives list.
• A new option to specify the 'local port' for the incoming data connection has been added for use when running in non-PASV mode.
• Log & trace options have been extended and it is now possible to configure your own viewer when you open/edit files.
• Command line options have been added for automatic transfers or to execute a list of FTP commands from a file.

GlinkApi

• Extensive enhancements to the GlinkApi have been added due to requirements for the new Glink web mode feature.