Ah. Ok that explains it. This means that in latex/fontspec it works with \setmainfont[Renderer=basic]{...}.
I guess so (if basic == basemode). There's nothing wrong with basemode in such cases.
thanks Ulrike and Hans for the comments. It works fine with Renderer=basic, although I'm not sure what the side effects of switching from Full to Basic will be (it's not a particularly well documented feature, at least in the fontspec manual). Sorry for posting to the wrong list; I was thinking about putting this in the Lua list, but I remembered someone saying anything Lua related is welcome on the ConTeXt list as well... which it probably is, but LuaLa(!)TeX is a different story, obviously. I'll try to gather more info on the renderer issue, wait a day or two for more comments here, and then will post the problem to the Lua list. take care Nils