hi alasdair,
> 1) Reduced Row Echelon Form.
the unfortunately-named "triangularize" (built-in function)
yields the row echelon form. dunno if that's close enough.
> 2) Minimal polynomial (of a matrix).
share/contrib/diag.mac contains a function minimalPoly.
load (diag) loads it. i don't know anything more about it.
> 3) Help for share library.
i've recently added the share directories to the list to
search for info files. so "? foo" finds foo in share info
files as well as the main info file. i've also been
converting some existing share docs to texinfo.
haven't gotten to zeilberger yet but it's on the to-do list.
(notes to developers: foo.info is found in the package foo,
the names have to match in this scheme.
foo.info is built automatically, just need to list it in foo/Makefile.am.)
> 4) Help in general. Maxima seems to use info as the basis
> for its help files.
i'm not opposed to something more mathematical than
texinfo, but my own inclination is to improve the text
before worrying too much about the appearance.
texinfo is fairly strange, but it has some points in its favor,
and changing to some other format would be a major time drain.
i've considered how to generate some nicer html output
from texinfo. haven't gotten very far there.
hope this helps,
robert dodier