Yeah, I know that much, I just didn't see why a trigger was needed in the first place.

uh guys, you *can* create triggers in code.  Take a look at the door code, or more specifically  Think_SpawnNewDoorTrigger.  It creates a trigger around each door so it will open when players get near it.  This way the mapper doesn't have to create a trigger for each door.

You use brushes for triggers simply to get the mins and maxs.  Besides that, they are normal entities, mostly because the model is ignored. Creating a door or elevator in code would be quite a bit more complicated, though still possible because Quake3 gives us the trap_R_AddPolyToScene function (you could just load up an md3, but what's the fun in that?)

that's exactly what I'm saying.  All you would have to do is set the mins and maxs to give it volume.  Here I'm assuming the .ent parser is looking for the mins/maxs key.  If not, you'll have to modify the .ent parser too.

I may be mistaken (and I'd certainly appreciate clarification if I am), but the way I understand it is that the .ant/.ent files are simply .map-format entities that are parsed in the same way BSP format entities are parsed (since point entities are formatted exactly the same in both the BSP and .map files).
I'm not sure I'm familiar with the "min" and "max" keys you're referring to.  My interest is certainly piqued, though.

every item has a bounding box which is represented by 2 vectors, a mins and a maxs.  You can think of them as representing the 'top left' and 'bottom right' of the bounding box, relative to the entity origin.  Since they are attached to the origin, they obviously move around as the origin does.  When you create a trigger in a map, quake3 will set the mins and maxs for you automagically.  If you create the trigger in code, then you have to set them explicitly.  Search the code for 'mins' or 'maxs'.

You'd only need to specify mins/maxs for triggers, clip areas and  anything that would needs a volume. For items and many other entities, you would just need the basic classname and origin.

ie. Adding an MP5 to an existing map in SoF2
{
"classname" "pickup_weapon_MP5"
"origin" "-129 2438 104"
}