Bitstream format - what is it?

[mpostol]

Recognizing bitstreams as the information representation we must deal with the next two terms: text and document. Sometimes we may also encounter the terms: formatted document or rich text format. Understanding these terms is a vital problem for software developers. In other words, we must face up the following questions:

• What conditions must be met to recognize bitstream as text?
• What conditions must be met to recognize the text as a document?
• What conditions must be met to recognize the document as a formatted document?