d reason why the coefficients of linear elements
might not also  be input by  rows.
After all, it is  more  natural to think of
specifying the constraints
for a  problem one at a time.  Furthermore,
requiring that a complete row or column  has been specified before the
next may be processed is unnecessarily restrictive.

<P>
We thus allow the data to be input in a either a group-wise (row-wise)
or  variable-wise (column-wise) fashion.  In  a group/row-wise scheme,
one or two coefficients and their  variable