FEATURE CONSTRAINT BASED DOCUMENT INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND DISTRIBUTION

摘要

A system including any numbe of workstations, file servers, printers and other fixed devices coupled in a network, and a number of portable devices carried by users and coupled to the network by infrared (IR) link. Each portable device emulates its user's personal satchel for documents: the device is programmed to receive transmit and store feature constraints (FCs). The FCs are distributed from one person to another by transmission of IR data packets, and once a network-connected computer, printer or multifunction device has received an FC via IR transceiver associated with it, a search request can be derived from the FC and document references (e.g. WWW URLs) satisfying the FC can be obtained via a search engine. For each URL obtained, the corresponding electronic document can be retrieved from a repository and displayed or printed. The portable device is preferably a handheld or wristwatch computer with a graphical display for enabling the user to transfer FCs, and the fixed devices preferably include a scanner/copier/printer having its own IR transceiver.