failure to obtain a contiguous partitioning

hello everyone. METIS 5.1.0 is k-way partitioning a planar graph of 8000 nodes for me, through the metis-python bindings. my application requires strictly contiguous partitions but METIS_OPTION_CONTIG has not yet had the desired effect. the debug output indicates that it is enabled, and the partitions come out not quite as discontiguous as before, but still far from truly contiguous; the problem is obvious in 2D color-coded maps (matplotlib) and graph renderings (graphviz).

is there anything else i should be doing to achieve this end?

here are the level 511 debug outputs from this job with and without METIS_OPTION_CONTIG. i'd be happy to post an adjacency file or a graphical rendering as well.

http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~abrick/tmp/C.log
http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~abrick/tmp/NC.log

thanks for your hard work, dr. karypis et al!