Hi Hans, in MkII the following is possible without problems: \setupcolors[state=start] \startuseMPgraphic{frameborder} drawoptions(withcolor \MPcolor{\framedparameter{framecolor}}) ; draw topboundary OverlayBox withpen pencircle scaled \the\dimexpr\framedparameter{toprulethickness}\relax ; draw bottomboundary OverlayBox withpen pencircle scaled \the\dimexpr\framedparameter{bottomrulethickness}\relax ; draw leftboundary OverlayBox withpen pencircle scaled \the\dimexpr\framedparameter{leftrulethickness}\relax ; draw rightboundary OverlayBox withpen pencircle scaled \the\dimexpr\framedparameter{rightrulethickness}\relax ; setbounds currentpicture to OverlayBox ; \stopuseMPgraphic \defineoverlay[frameborder][\useMPgraphic{frameborder}] \defineframed [mpframed] [ toprulethickness=\framedparameter{rulethickness}, bottomrulethickness=\framedparameter{rulethickness}, leftrulethickness=\framedparameter{rulethickness}, rightrulethickness=\framedparameter{rulethickness}, background=frameborder] \starttext \mpframed[width=4cm,height=4cm,toprulethickness=1pt,framecolor=red]{text} \stoptext In MkIV this is no longer possible because \framedparameter accepts only protected keys (e.g. \c!rulethickness) and on the fly key-value-pairs like 'toprulethickness=\framedparameter{rulethickness}' are also useless because you need now \c!toprulethickness to use the value in another command like metapost graphics. Can you provide a mechanism to access these values again on the user side, e.g. \userparameter{framed:toprulethickness}. Best regards, Wolfgang