The Satchel system architecture: Mobile access to documents and services

Mobile professionals require access to documents and document‐related services, such as printing, wherever they may be. They may also wish to give documents to colleagues electronically, as easily as with paper, face‐to‐face, and with similar security characteristics. The Satchel system provides such capabilities in the form of a mobile browser, implemented on a device that professional people would be likely to carry anyway, such as a pager or mobile phone. Printing may be performed on any Satchel‐enabled printer, or any fax machine. Scanning, too, may be accomplished at any Satchel‐enabled scanner. Access rights to individual documents may be safely distributed, without regard to document formats. Access to document services is greatly simplified by the use of context sensitivity. The system has been extensively tested and evaluated. This paper describes the architecture of the Satchel system.