solving equations (are there man pages?)



> I am new to (x)maxima.

Welcome!

> The following does not seem to execute (C4); 

Actually, Maxima is in a very long computation in C4 (maybe an infinite
loop).  A simpler form of this computation returns zero solutions (which
is not correct), so there is a bug somewhere in here.  Sorry about that.

There is another issue.  You presumably wanted Maxima to substitute in
the values of d=%pi/6, etc. into your equation.  But writing "d=%pi/6"
on a C-line doesn't do that.  That is simply a mathematical equation.
To *set* d to the value %pi/6, use the assignment operator, ":", e.g.
"d: %pi/6".

As for documentation, yes there is documentation.  Not well written, not
well cross-referenced, not much how-to-use information, but actually
quite complete as *reference* documentation.  I find the easiest way to
read it is using Info (within Emacs) -- unfortunately, the xmaxima
installation procedure doesn't automatically install Info links, so
you'll have to explicitly point at the file info/maxima.info in your
installation directory.  Within Emacs, type C-u C-h i
XXXX/info/maxima.info.  xmaxima also has the menu item Help/Maxima Help,
but that is broken (on my install at least).  On-line help within Maxima
is useful for looking up specific reference topics, e.g.
describe("solve").

Good luck!

      -s