A Mixed Media Reality (MMR) system and associated techniques are disclosed. The MMR system provides mechanisms for forming a mixed media document that includes media of at least two types (e.g., printed paper as a first medium and digital content and/or web link as a second medium). In one particular embodiment, the MMR system includes an action processor and method, and MMR documents with an associated action. The MMR document structure is particularly advantageous because the ability to specify different actions for different MMR documents, combined with the ability to create any number of MMR documents for a particular location on any media, allows the MMR architecture to serve as a universal trigger or initiator for additional processing. In other words, addition processing or actions can be triggered or initiated based on MMR recognition. The action processor receives the output of the MMR recognition process which yields an MMR document including at least one action. The action processor executes that action which includes various commands to the MMR system or other systems coupled to the MMR system. The MMR system architecture is advantageous because an action can be executed by pointing the capture device at a block of text, and the action is performed. Example actions include retrieving the text in electronic form to the capture device, retrieving the specification for the action, inserting data to a MMR document, transferring data between documents, purchasing items, authoring actions or reviewing historical information about actions. The MMR system includes a variety of user applications (one or more actions) initiated by the MMR recognition of a text patch such as information retrieval for a travel guide book, stock listings or advertisements; information capture such as recording content from a conference, recording and storing multimedia associated with the document, capturing information for a calendar and on the fly authoring; purchasing media files for storage on any part of an MMR document.