hello daniel,
> I had no idea until today that the TRIGRAT function
> existed. I happened to find it in one of wxMaxima's
> pull-down menus, and I clicked it to see what it would
> do. There are other simplifications that Maxima seems
> to be able to perform, but figuring out which commands
> to use and what order to apply them in is daunting to
> a newbie.
well, as mentioned elsewhere, it's pretty daunting to long-time users as well.
i have some ideas here although nothing to specifically address this problem --
(1) consider http://maxima.sf.net/docs/tutorial/en/minimal-maxima.pdf
although that is mostly aimed at broader issues.
(2) it occurs to me that the refererence manual could be improved
by a category system. what i mean is something like the categories
shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem
trigrat, for example, would appear in trigonometry and simplification
categories.
(3) i have toyed with the notion of a function that would do something
like this:
ideas (sqrt(2)*cos(t-%pi/4)) => [trigthis, trigthat, trigtheother,
..., trigrat]
presumably the ideas function would apply some heuristics to generate
a list of relevant functions. i haven't thought this through so i wouldn't
be surprised if the idea is flawed from the start.
sorry i can't be more helpful,
robert dodier