When using bulleted lists in OpenOffice.org's Writer and saving the document in
plain text, bullets are not converted to anything, such as asterisks, in the
plain text and are just left out. I tested this in Ubuntu 5.10's included
OpenOffice.org Writer and in Ubuntu Dapper Flight 6's OpenOffice.org Writer
(ubuntu package version 2.0.2-1ubuntu6).

Reproducing this:

1. Open OpenOffice.org's Writer. (Applications -> Office -> OpenOffice.org Writer)

2. In the blank document enter the following 3 lines:
list item one
list item two
list item three

3. Highlight the three lines and click the "Bullets" button on the toolbar to
make that list be a bulleted list.

You'll see bullets in front of each item on the list.

4. Now, click File, then Save As, and save the document as a plain text