mnewton error



> The Jacobian determinant  of your function f(a,b,c,d) is 0 at [1,1,1,1]. 
 

Nevertheless, I suspect that there is an error somewhere:

Unable to compute the LU factorization
#0: solve_by_lu(
Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
 Error in MERROR [or a callee]: NIL is not of type CHARACTER.

The user should get a clear message, not a Lisp error.

I'd guess this is a bug in the LU code, but the mnewton code could use 
improvement.
Maybe the bug is related to the (ill-advised) way that the mnewton code 
uses an
undeclared array h.

--Barton