Hi Hans, the example below shows a problems Idris has reported a few times. When you enable the bidi mechanism it gets reset for - footnotes, - margin notes and - header/footer texts, because the attribute setting in typo-dir.mkiv doesn’t include the "global" keyword. %%%% type-dir.mkiv \definesystemattribute[directions][public] %%%% Adding "global" to the second argument would fix the wrong output. %%%% test.tex \definefontfamily [mainface] [rm] [ALM Fixed] [features=arabic] \setupbodyfont [mainface] \setuplayout[backspace=5cm,width=middle,leftmargin=4cm] \setupdirections [bidi=global] \setupheadertexts[Test امتحان test] \starttext Test امتحان test\footnote{Test امتحان test} Test امتحان test\inmargin{Test امتحان test} \stoptext %%%% Wolfgang