Hello Roger,
> I will do that if I must, but I wanted to keep to a minimum the number
> of items installed outside the Gentoo package management system,
> which has 5.9.1 as the most recent version at present.
OK, maybe I will try to drop the Gentoo project a note
to say there is a newer version of Maxima available.
> > and does a file named maxima.info exist there?
>
> Yes, as maxima.info.gz
I think this is the problem; I don't think Maxima knows
what to do with compressed info. Try gunzip'ing this
into maxima.info and then (I hope) describe will work.
best,
Robert Dodier