I never understood why (it seemed) so few people used this. I tried everything that was out there (back then) and nothing came close. So flexible in its layout, and plenty of features.

But I was an MS fanboy, and BspEditor had that look and feel as far as I was concerned. Maybe it was just because I was using Windows on a PC?

The only thing it lacked was a decent built-in compiler but I wrote a little GUI that I could call direct from BspE and I was as happy as the proverbial sandboy.

I created many maps with BspE and even released about a dozen or so. It was fun. 

had the possibillity to change the editor, bars, colours and screen layout at own choice, which was rather unusual that time! 

TrenchBroom (Version 2)
J.A.C.K (formerly "Jackhammer")
Custom Netradiant
GtkRadiant 1.6

Compilers:
Enhanced Tyrutils by ericw
Enhanced BJP tools by rebb 

My introduction to mapping was through the Cube series of games, so I've always tended towards 3D editors and wyswyg etc, which is some of what TB offers, so finding out that it existed was great. I'm pretty new to Quake as well, so TB is the only editor I've ever used.

But still... I feel like I'm really missing something with other editors. I've looked at them, and they just seem so hostile and intimidating. I mean honestly, I look at something like this, J.A.C.K. or whatever it's called now, and I just don't get it. the 3D view is fine, and demonstrates that this is a somewhat detailed area and so on, but the 2D views...

it's such a mess! It's so dense with information, edges, vertices etc. all layered over each other to the point where I just can't decipher it.

What's the thought process that goes into using such an interface? It obviously works for a lot of people over the course of multiple decades, so it's hardly bad... I just don't get it.
I feel like a tool for not understanding, please enlighten me :( 

that when you are making a level in a 4-port editor such as JACK that the vertices make much more sense to you as you have the knowledge of the entire map. There are many tools that assist with the views such as vis-groups and highlighting, cordons, etc.

It really is just what you are comfortable with. I had trouble with TB due to the lack of 2d views because that's what I've always used 

Before Quake we mapped for Doom. 2D was all Doom had and we got used to it.

On the other hand, the overlapping of everything in the 2D views of a Quake map can get confusing. I generally do all the moving around, looking, and selecting in the 3D window. Once a brush or entity is selected I use the 2D view, but sometimes vertex manipulation is easier in the 3D window.

My setup in Netradiant is one big 3D view pane, a tall 2D view pane to the left (I use ctl-tab to switch view direction), and a short texture pane below the 3D pane. 

The 2D views for me in J.A.C.K/Worldcraft/Hammer I only ever look at when I already have selected what I want to manipulate, either move, resize, rotate, or skew. Other than that, no their just a mess of useless lines. Really and truly they only ever need to show what is selected unless you want to see the top view layout of the level.

-Hammer veteran of 12 years 

I normally just select a bunch of busy geometry and press h.

If I want to see it again I press u. 

in J.A.C.K FYI. 

Can hide/unhide with H and shift+H in Netradiant.

There's also a filter list. You can selectively filter out things like entities, clips, triggers, etc. I wish it had more choices (just lights, only point entities, etc.) but what's there does help. 

put them separately into visgroups and you can hide them, at least in WC/Hammer/JACK. It's a bit of work at first but can speed things up a lot.

If only editing multiple entities at once fast was possible it would be an even better option. 

Why would anybody use hammer or worldcraft over jack(hammer)?

The only reason that I could think of is if you were actively developing for valve games as well as quake. 

...if you learned mapping on one of those editors and don't want to go through the hassle of learning another editor if you don't feel limited by the one you're already used to. After all, Worldcraft started as THE editor of reference for Quake.

This is how people don't feel comfortable using Trenchbroom when it's objectively by far the most intuitive editor I've ever tried. 

I wouldn't bandy that word around lightly. I think there's a definite argument to be made in favour of editors like J.A.C.K, although now that TB has the 2D views as well perhaps not as strong an argument. (Does anyone have experience with that? I never tried them) 

I tried TB2 yesterday and I can tell it may be a more efficient editor than Worldcraft derivatives. Pushing and pulling brushwork in the 3D view is nice. However, I found vertex manipulation to be extremely finicky, though I may just need more experience with the controls. Since TB2 doesn't have primitives like Worldcraft editors, you need to create arched brushes yourself and working with vertices in the 3D view is frustrating at best. I couldn't reliably pull edges/vertices in the direction I wanted and would spend over a minute shaping just one of the four brushes for half of the arch I would need to adequately match the curvature of the texture. It just seems like complicated geometry would be difficult to work with in TB. 

It's a bit of a learned art. I struggled at first to make good shapes with the vertex editor, but once you catch on to the fact that the directions you can pull properly in are affected by your camera angle it becomes a bit easier to use. Trying to push at a severe angle to the camera produces wacky results where the vert just shoots off into the distance...

I will definitely say that building curves is very painful, and primitive support would be appreciated... 

I have been struggling with same thing.. I personally would like to figure out what is going on in every view.

TB[Version 2] has orthogonal view also.. but only reason why those are useful/fast is when using precise steps, and working on basic layouts of your map (but that is just my opinion.

If there is going to be multiple layers of rooms on top of each other everything will get messy and hard to navigate through these orthogonal view.

You can group/put in different layers your entities and brushes, and try to organize your used space. For example layers: "Top Floor" "Mid Floor" etc. but even though TB support using those.. it is really time consuming and not always worth of effort.

In the end you just need slowly get used to what ever feels better for you.. or maybe using other editor for different uses.. I use J.A.C.K and TB together. For example I love J.A.C.K features that can create arches, cylinders and all kind of basic shapes, but everything else I do basically in TB. 

I really should give J.A.C.K. a try for those primitives, I've made some pretty awful circles in TB... 

Yeah TB totally is not for those kind of primitives... hopefully in the future there will some features for those even. 

@Pritchard I didn't say it's the best, I said it's the most intuitive. I also added "that I've ever tried". Of course, other editors probably have stronger points, but they're also much more complex to handle for n00bs. Never tried J.A.C.K. but I tried editors like WC and Radiant back in the day, was put off by their complexity and never got past one blocky empty room. With TB I could build stuff from the get-go in the 3D view without having to memorize the full readme first. That's intuitiveness at its finest IMHO. That said, I'm right here with you regarding primitives. Has anyone made a feature request for those on Github?

@NewHouse You can easily make cylinders in TB with the intersect feature: build a cube, duplicate, rotate, intersect. Rinse and repeat.

@Sevin Study the help file. There are keyboard shortcuts that will make your life much easier, like locking the editing along one axis to prevent the kind of weird behavior you were talking about. 

Yes, TB is very shortcut-focused. I read the readme while I missed around. You can lock movement to one axis only when you've already begun moving, and most of the time it would start on the wrong axis. I don't want to have to keep jiggling my camera so I can get the vertex moving in the right direction. Plus, moving the cam so I can get on the right axis often has the consequence of making it impossible to see where I'm going, so I end up bouncing back and forth between moving my camera and moving the vertices. It's not intuitive to me, but I can see how setting up basic brushwork on the 32+ grid could be greatly streamlined using TB. Maybe using TB for alphas/whiteboxes and then Radiant/WC for betas and later would be a good practice. 

You must be first one ever suggesting something like that.. it doesn't come to my mind at all, because I always though rotating in TB wasn't that trustworthy. And especially when trying to make stylished simplified cylinders that method is trying to achieve more realistic look? 

Like this? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwxYkKdSD855N0lNUlViYUQ1Rm8/view?usp=sharing 

The only CSG operation that I trust is merge. as far as I'm concerned, subtract and intersect are black magic not to be messed with...
It always takes me at least like, 3-4 tries to get subtract to work ;-; 

Getting kind of off topic, but speaking of CSG: why does HL have a CSG build program but Quake doesn't? What does CSG do that BSP doesn't?