Hraban, Thanks. I will have a play with that -- I am always getting lost in the various sets of syntax rules (mk's, etc)... You are right, the new MKIV syntax hints at possibilities. Is any documentation other than the footnote page on the wiki and a few recent posts? Do I really have to dig through the sources in base for switches, options, etc?
In ConTeXt MkIV \setupfootnotes is gone, it's \setupnote[footnote] now (and the "conversion" parameter was renamed to "numberconversion"); you can deduct that there are several kinds of notes should be simply possible via \note[mynote]{} etc. (Since \note collides with MkII's \note, I don't know and I can't test at the moment.)
Perhaps add your findings to http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Footnotes
Happy to do so. I have never written on contextgarden. Just go ahead and modify and expand? Or go through the discussion page first? I'm a bit on the cautious side here .. Thanks, Martin