"quotient is not exact" with Taylor series expansion?



Dear colleagues,

I'm facing the following problem in Maxima 5.9.1:

I need to find the 6-term Taylor expansion of

sqrt((a+b*x^2+sqrt(c+d*x^2+e*x^4))/2);

but Maxima responds with error message "quotient is not exact". However, a
4-term Taylor expansion works fine. See below. Any ideas?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

(%i1) sqrt((a+b*x^2+sqrt(c+d*x^2+e*x^4))/2);

                                 4      2           2
                    SQRT(SQRT(e x  + d x  + c) + b x  + a)
(%o1)               --------------------------------------
                                   SQRT(2)
(%i2) taylor(%,x,0,6);

quotient is not exact
 -- an error.  Quitting.  To debug this try DEBUGMODE(TRUE);
(%i3) taylor(%o1,x,0,4);

         SQRT(SQRT(c) + a)
(%o3)/T/ -----------------
              SQRT(2)

                                                            2
   (SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) SQRT(c) d + 2 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) b c) x
 + ----------------------------------------------------------
              (4 SQRT(2) a + 4 SQRT(c) SQRT(2)) c

                          2
 + ((8 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) c  + 8 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) SQRT(c) a c) e

                                                              2
 + (- 3 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) c - 2 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) SQRT(c) a) d

                                                            2  2   4
 - 4 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) SQRT(c) b c d - 4 SQRT(SQRT(c) + a) b  c ) x

              3                2                          2
/(32 SQRT(2) c  + (32 SQRT(2) a  + 64 SQRT(c) SQRT(2) a) c ) + . . .