Forcing integer plane points will result in more vertex drift as the editor needs to move vertices around so that the planes are all represented with integers. You'll get vertices off grid and such. 

But isn't that better than the verts drifting slowly over time as I close and re-open the map? At least I can see it happen and fix it on the spot. 

You're wrong. TB2 doesn't have this option at all and always allows you to use float points for planes. It will give you warnings in an issue browser though, with a quick way to fix them.

int plane points may or may not safe you from drifting vertices. I can't quite remember how TB1 handles it, but I think the problem is in writing and reloading floating points through text files - it's always lossy.

But as necros said, integer vertices will cause vertices to wander. There really isn't a way to deal with this problem that completely avoids any headaches. Integer plane points will give you off grid vertices, and float plane points may give you drifting vertices. Both might result in microleaks. 

integer vertices will not cause vertices to wander, but it will often result in vertices which are off the grid. 

I have the thingy majingy bound to the doodly do 

How does one become a beta tester for TB2? :P I have a project I'm working on, so I can provide real world feedback... 

I was thinking ... Of course you've considered this, but I'm wondering why you would have rejected the idea. What about a custom .TB file format or something? Why use the MAP file format for all I/O? It seems like that's where the loss is happening. If you stored the map in your own format and just spit out a fresh MAP file for each compilation you would eliminate this problem.

Like what Worldcraft did... 

.TB being a binary format, I mean. Something lossless regarding floats. 

Good idea imo 

and I don't want a binary format for better compatibility with other editors, also being able to edit the files in a text editor is a bonus. 

Was very 'strong' in that regard... but the headaches created by the proprietary format weren't minor.

Although having full control over it would avoid things like texture conversion problems of course. Most of which were caused by Valve not releasing the source.

I suppose it all depends on if you want to create and then support an additional map format SleepWalkR.

Just musing aimlessly when I should be 'working' :) 

"but the headaches created by the proprietary format weren't minor. "

You mean the RMF format? What were those, I'm not aware of what happened.

I think it allows for a few things ... floating point stuff aside, it allows for editor proprietary stuff like groups or prefabs/instances pretty easily.

I did the same thing in ToeTag in that I used the MAP file for everything. This meant that anything non-Quake had to get stuck into special comment lines that I parsed later. Was a little hacky and if I did it over again, I'd probably just make my own format.

As long as you can read/write MAP files also it shouldn't be an issue. 

It was often a blocker for working in teams - often getting someone to pull out their own teeth than install a secondary editor was easier. Getting someone to convert a map before sending it the same.

The other issues were all caused by committee design, things like texture alignment and WAD conversion.

Really, human obstinacy was the only real problem.

And if you support map as well as have a 'clean' format which still plays nice with other editors after export then it should be a non-issue in a technical sense. 

Maybe we need AlembicQuakeCollada 

Oh yeah, everyone loves a good standards fight, right? Right? Guys? 

Writing a float to text and reading it back doesn't need to be lossy.

From wikipedia,
if an IEEE 754 single precision is converted to a decimal string with at least 9 significant decimal and then converted back to single, then the final number must match the original

So just use "%.9g" in C and you're good. (I guess it's stream.precision(9); in C++)

I made a little test program a while ago that just loops through all 32-bit values, copies the bits into a float, does a round trip to string with "%.9g" and confirmed that is lossless for all 32-bit float values. 

Cause TB2 is double prec. 

17 digits (wiki) 

Can anyone recommend a programme for editing Quake textures and particularly texture wads, which runs on Linux?

Initially what I would like to do is just to extract one texture from a particular wad (let's call it "wad A") and add it to a different wad ("B"), since it is the only texture from wad A I plan to use, and wad A is enormous -- so it's really clogging the texture browser in TrenchBroom, and makes it a pain to search for textures in wad B*. I seem to recall reading that it's possible to do that, but I cannot seem to find that information again. (Can someone confirm -- is it possible to extract single textures and/or splice/merge different wads?)

---
*I guess that's what TrenchBroom's "group" feature is for, but when I click "group" in the texture browser, it just seems to make a bunch of textures unavailable. Maybe I'm doing something wrong there. 

QuakeForge has a commandline wad tool. 

No idea how to make it output mips and create wads though, sorry. 

after an -onlyents compile with an already lit map, your switchable light gets lost. Light again for viewing pleasure.

I think thats why mfxsp17 sucks so much;) 

i think you can run light -onlyents to fix it 

you can with aguirre's tool for sure. 

Old habit..