Hans,
no time for a detailed answer now, but in xml mode you can make { } letters which solves the problem
Could you please elaborate a bit? I'm not familiar with ConTeXt's XML mode (other than for processing MathML). One thing that I suspect is that XML mode would have an issue with '<' and '>' in the filenames. Another thought: The image filenames are encoded in my original xml documents according to RFC 1738 (http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm). In my XML -> ConTeXt XSL stylesheets I'm decoding those filenames. Would it be useful for others if the externalfigure could understand url encoded filenames similar to something like this: % % includes the file "flower{1.jpg" % \externalfigure[flower%7B1.jpg][encoding=rfc1738] This would give ConTeXt a general-purpose filename escaping mechanism. Cheers, Mike