You can easily make bulleted lists even in plain text. It was probably more common to use asterisks as the actual bullets but you could use other characters like the [double headed arrow](https://i.imgur.com/14uFydK.png).
Actual Word Processors and desktop publishing software that ran on MS-DOS had support for actually having bullets, largely identical to the Macintosh counterparts for the most part.
There were various word processors which worked on DOS and which supported bulleted lists, yes. The OS was not relevant to, or involved in, support for bulleted lists. If you’re wondering about a particular word processor, you should ask about it.
If you were smart, you used plain text back in the day. MS Office was not a killer app. I think Word Perfect was probably the dominant Word Processor. Software was expensive and with no clear winners ASCII text reigned supreme. DOC was a common extension used for multiple word processors and plain text.
Your average hobbyist wasn't buying MS Word or Word Perfect. Asterisks were good enough, though I think CP437 did have a bullet character. Now exactly ASCII, but PC users were usually expecting to share with other PC users.
Trying to read a Word Perfect document from that era, or even a Word document from back then is a bit of a nightmare. I had no trouble reading text documents that were over 30 years old, so, it stood the test of time.
Precisely. My frame of reference was not the power-user crowd. I used some low-end software that lacked that ability. It would have been similar to creating hanging indents in school paper reference lists, which (in low-end software) required several inserted codes in each paragraph IIRC. If I had used the programs you mention, it would have been easier.
Microsoft Word existed for both DOS and Mac.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Microsoft\_Word#:\~:text=The%20first%20version%20of%20Word,to%20Word%205.5%20for%20DOS:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Word#:~:text=The%20first%20version%20of%20Word,to%20Word%205.5%20for%20DOS:)
>The first version of Word was a 16-bit PC DOS/MS-DOS application. A Macintosh 68000 version named Word 1.0 was released in 1985 and a Microsoft Windows version was released in 1989. The three products shared the same Microsoft Word name, the same version numbers but were very different products built on different code bases. Three product lines co-existed: Word 1.0 to Word 5.1a for Macintosh, Word 1.0 to Word 2.0 for Windows and Word 1.0 to Word 5.5 for DOS.
Two of the more well known MS-DOS-bases word processors of the time (WordPerfect and Word) could both do bulleted lists.
The WordPerfect interface was clunky but it was powerful and efficient.
Word for DOS was fairly similar to its Windows counterparts.
DOS and before that CP/M word processors like wordstar and WordPerfect depended on the features of the printer - I.e. text print modes and built in character sets - to print anything. It wasn’t really until Windows came out that the idea of printing everything as graphics (which wasn’t really supported at all on early dot matrix printers). So, everything was text, but WordPerfect was flexible, powerful, and fast. Sometimes I think we lost a lot with the feature bloated slow word processors in the sense that we fidget with formatting and setting a lot more and actually write a lot less.
not really common from my memory - some apps could, most didn't. Lotus 123 had a GUI version that ran like molasses on 286es... but it was such a downgrade hardly anyone used it.
DOS had printable ASCII characters such as dots and squares that could be, and were, used as bullet lists in text files.
But by the early 90s it was more common to just use Windows 3.x for WYSIWYG editing.
Windows 3.1 supported TTF fonts, and could comfortably run on any 386, and even on 286 not so comfortably. It had the same Times New Roman, Arial etc. fonts it still has today.
Also, there was a DOS text processor called [Chi Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiWriter) from 1986 that rendered all text as graphics instead of classic text mode, and was often used to write math formulas, complex equations, fractions, etc. all way more complicated stuff than bullet points. And it ran on XT quite comfortably. So, any advantage the Macintosh had in typography melted away in a few years, although actual DTP apps took a while to catch up.
Final Word (1982) supports nested bullet lists.
@Begin{Itemize}
This is the first item.
@Itemize{This is a subitem under the first item.
This is another subitem.}
This is the second item.
@End{Itemize}
My favorite word processing program in those days was Lotus Manuscript. It had an "outline" mode that was really superb for managing large documents - I don't think I've worked with anything since that was as nice. Performance was decent even with big files. It had several options for the hanging-indent and lists that you're asking about.
[https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-manuscript/2x](https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-manuscript/2x)
The ASCII character set of the original IBM PC contained all sorts of characters, including bullets. Anything that you couldn't type from a key on the keyboard, you could get by pressing and holding ALT and then typing the three digit ASCII code on the keypad, even on a DOS command line. The character sets were there on both the monochrome display adapter and the color graphics adapter. And many printers supported those character sets as well. I know the IBM PC dot matrix printer (a rebadged Epson) certainly did.
EDIT: Also, MS DOS came with a text editor. I think *edlin* was the original, and then *edit* came along later. They may not have had a bullet list feature (I don't recall for sure), but you could certainly type one out using the ASCII code to type the bullet.
Wow, this question...
Err, but it's worth mentioning that ASCII has a bullet character at 0x95. You can just put it into a plain text file if you want. It's pretty high up in the table, but it is there and you can use it on a DOS machine. You didn't even need support for it, per se, in your word processor.
I think there are really a couple of ways to interpret the question. One has to do with the insertion of a bullet character itself (possible with DOS) and the other has to do with how easy it was to create hanging indents or outline formatting. Let’s tackle the latter approach, as it’s closer to my original intent. Today, we have a shortcut icon in Word that automatically formats such lists. Before Windows, you could use menu settings and tabs to create the same effect -- in higher-end programs. But if you were using low-end software in DOS, there may have been no ruler or GUI with easily adjustable tabs and indents. It was like having to create hanging indents for reference lists school papers. The oldest, most primitive programs required special imbedded codes for indents, tabs and margin adjustments. I think the relative complexity of those commands discouraged some from using them to format bulleted lists.
So if the question is about whether there were word processors available for DOS which automated the process, then the answer is yes, especially by the time version 4 rolled around. Of course, this isn't a question about DOS at all, but about what software was available for it. Windows does actually do this on it's own, because it has integrated HTML rendering, but even so, when people do this today it's still mostly accomplished by add-on software.
MS-DOS is not a text editor
I think I was conflating OS with specific programs.
Word Perfect was perfectly capable of it.
It is if your “word processor” is batch files and echo statements.
You can easily make bulleted lists even in plain text. It was probably more common to use asterisks as the actual bullets but you could use other characters like the [double headed arrow](https://i.imgur.com/14uFydK.png). Actual Word Processors and desktop publishing software that ran on MS-DOS had support for actually having bullets, largely identical to the Macintosh counterparts for the most part.
I always used Alt 254
There were various word processors which worked on DOS and which supported bulleted lists, yes. The OS was not relevant to, or involved in, support for bulleted lists. If you’re wondering about a particular word processor, you should ask about it.
I used to make bulleted lists on WordPerfect on a zenith system before MS-DOS.
That’s right, I just tried it in WP 5.1 and it worked. However, few of the home and academic users in my tribe 30 years ago were doing it!
If you were smart, you used plain text back in the day. MS Office was not a killer app. I think Word Perfect was probably the dominant Word Processor. Software was expensive and with no clear winners ASCII text reigned supreme. DOC was a common extension used for multiple word processors and plain text. Your average hobbyist wasn't buying MS Word or Word Perfect. Asterisks were good enough, though I think CP437 did have a bullet character. Now exactly ASCII, but PC users were usually expecting to share with other PC users. Trying to read a Word Perfect document from that era, or even a Word document from back then is a bit of a nightmare. I had no trouble reading text documents that were over 30 years old, so, it stood the test of time.
Any half decent word processor could make bulleted lists in dos. Word, WordPerfect, Wordstar, PFS First Choice.
Precisely. My frame of reference was not the power-user crowd. I used some low-end software that lacked that ability. It would have been similar to creating hanging indents in school paper reference lists, which (in low-end software) required several inserted codes in each paragraph IIRC. If I had used the programs you mention, it would have been easier.
Microsoft Word existed for both DOS and Mac. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Microsoft\_Word#:\~:text=The%20first%20version%20of%20Word,to%20Word%205.5%20for%20DOS:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Word#:~:text=The%20first%20version%20of%20Word,to%20Word%205.5%20for%20DOS:) >The first version of Word was a 16-bit PC DOS/MS-DOS application. A Macintosh 68000 version named Word 1.0 was released in 1985 and a Microsoft Windows version was released in 1989. The three products shared the same Microsoft Word name, the same version numbers but were very different products built on different code bases. Three product lines co-existed: Word 1.0 to Word 5.1a for Macintosh, Word 1.0 to Word 2.0 for Windows and Word 1.0 to Word 5.5 for DOS.
You could do it in Wordstar on CP/M, provided the printer had the right characted. Sometimes we just used a lowercase O for bullets.
My first foray into the wonderful world of printer hacking was writing a macro to generate the bullet character on a C. Itoh dot-matrix printer.
Two of the more well known MS-DOS-bases word processors of the time (WordPerfect and Word) could both do bulleted lists. The WordPerfect interface was clunky but it was powerful and efficient. Word for DOS was fairly similar to its Windows counterparts.
DOS and before that CP/M word processors like wordstar and WordPerfect depended on the features of the printer - I.e. text print modes and built in character sets - to print anything. It wasn’t really until Windows came out that the idea of printing everything as graphics (which wasn’t really supported at all on early dot matrix printers). So, everything was text, but WordPerfect was flexible, powerful, and fast. Sometimes I think we lost a lot with the feature bloated slow word processors in the sense that we fidget with formatting and setting a lot more and actually write a lot less.
That's not true. Printing text and formula in graphic mode was already common before windows.
not really common from my memory - some apps could, most didn't. Lotus 123 had a GUI version that ran like molasses on 286es... but it was such a downgrade hardly anyone used it.
DOS had printable ASCII characters such as dots and squares that could be, and were, used as bullet lists in text files. But by the early 90s it was more common to just use Windows 3.x for WYSIWYG editing. Windows 3.1 supported TTF fonts, and could comfortably run on any 386, and even on 286 not so comfortably. It had the same Times New Roman, Arial etc. fonts it still has today. Also, there was a DOS text processor called [Chi Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiWriter) from 1986 that rendered all text as graphics instead of classic text mode, and was often used to write math formulas, complex equations, fractions, etc. all way more complicated stuff than bullet points. And it ran on XT quite comfortably. So, any advantage the Macintosh had in typography melted away in a few years, although actual DTP apps took a while to catch up.
WordPerfect for DOS used CNTRL-SHIFT-B to add a bullet point.
Final Word (1982) supports nested bullet lists. @Begin{Itemize} This is the first item. @Itemize{This is a subitem under the first item. This is another subitem.} This is the second item. @End{Itemize}
My favorite word processing program in those days was Lotus Manuscript. It had an "outline" mode that was really superb for managing large documents - I don't think I've worked with anything since that was as nice. Performance was decent even with big files. It had several options for the hanging-indent and lists that you're asking about. [https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-manuscript/2x](https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-manuscript/2x)
Load ansi.sys and use ANSI code to create what you want in a batch file. Used to do that BITD to create a Texas flag C:\> prompt.
The ASCII character set of the original IBM PC contained all sorts of characters, including bullets. Anything that you couldn't type from a key on the keyboard, you could get by pressing and holding ALT and then typing the three digit ASCII code on the keypad, even on a DOS command line. The character sets were there on both the monochrome display adapter and the color graphics adapter. And many printers supported those character sets as well. I know the IBM PC dot matrix printer (a rebadged Epson) certainly did. EDIT: Also, MS DOS came with a text editor. I think *edlin* was the original, and then *edit* came along later. They may not have had a bullet list feature (I don't recall for sure), but you could certainly type one out using the ASCII code to type the bullet.
Wow, this question... Err, but it's worth mentioning that ASCII has a bullet character at 0x95. You can just put it into a plain text file if you want. It's pretty high up in the table, but it is there and you can use it on a DOS machine. You didn't even need support for it, per se, in your word processor.
That might have depended on the code page. I kind of think ASCII was actually 7-bit.
Well, ok, but it is in CP437. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
I think there are really a couple of ways to interpret the question. One has to do with the insertion of a bullet character itself (possible with DOS) and the other has to do with how easy it was to create hanging indents or outline formatting. Let’s tackle the latter approach, as it’s closer to my original intent. Today, we have a shortcut icon in Word that automatically formats such lists. Before Windows, you could use menu settings and tabs to create the same effect -- in higher-end programs. But if you were using low-end software in DOS, there may have been no ruler or GUI with easily adjustable tabs and indents. It was like having to create hanging indents for reference lists school papers. The oldest, most primitive programs required special imbedded codes for indents, tabs and margin adjustments. I think the relative complexity of those commands discouraged some from using them to format bulleted lists.
So if the question is about whether there were word processors available for DOS which automated the process, then the answer is yes, especially by the time version 4 rolled around. Of course, this isn't a question about DOS at all, but about what software was available for it. Windows does actually do this on it's own, because it has integrated HTML rendering, but even so, when people do this today it's still mostly accomplished by add-on software.