step by step

the courtroom is a room.
the description of the courtroom is " a long narrow room furnished with rows of long wooden benches for the public to sit on. the judges bench looks down on the two tables where the defense and prosecution teams sit"

OK this is the first thing everyone starts with. so what is next?

if everyone added one thing they knew about inform 7 in this one post, what a starting point this post would be for every newbies, including me.

The Courtroom is a room. "Blah, blah, blah."

galahad1957 is a person. galahad1957 is in the courtroom.

Starting out I read “Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7” by Aaron Reed. Very good read and an integral approach to Inform 7.

If this turned into a chinese-whispers-style compileable source code…

…it would be most cool.

The description of galahad1957 is "Galahad1957 eagerly awaits your contributions." The description of the player is "You're not just here to look good. You're here to help."

[code]A thing can be either near or far. A thing is usually near.

Before doing something when the noun is far and the action requires a touchable noun:
say “[The noun] [are] too far away.” instead.

Before doing something when the second noun is far and the action requires a touchable second noun:
say “[The second noun] [are] too far away.” instead.[/code]

Then if you’ve got things that are always going to be out of reach, for instance, the sun, you can say something like

The sun is far.

And that’ll take care of attempts to push the sun, smell the sun, and other odd actions you’ll discover are possible if you use the extension Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen, which I highly recommend.

Good book, also don’t ignore the actual documentation in the IDE. You don’t need to read it all at once, but definitely get through it and experiment with the examples.

Most of the things I’d say to new Inform 7 authors (apart from answering questions) are in my quick-start guide.

Welcome To Adventure: A Quick-Start Guide to Inform 7

an excellent start for this post. keep up the good work everyone :]
how about someone simplifying the conversation code of topic response using a who, what, when, where why and how?
the judge asked the defense to call their first witness. the defendant is charged with ???