Hi again Wolfgang,

I think I understood what is going wrong with my example after your hint: I have to remove all spaces around the separator and remove also the braces around each entry.
That is the following works fine:

\startseplisttalk
Hacker;Up to date hacking;hacker.jpg
Hacker;Up to date hacking;hacker.jpg
\stopseplisttalk

while the following does not (as far as the filename is concerned):

\startseplisttalk
{Hacker};{Up to date hacking};{hacker.jpg}
Hacker ; Up to date hacking ; hacker.jpg
\stopseplisttalk

Is there a way to make the \defineseparatedlist command to be more tolerant for the filename? 
Best regards: OK

> On 30 Jan 2018, at 16:28, Otared Kavian <otared@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 30 Jan 2018, at 15:54, Wolfgang Schuster <schuster.wolfgang@gmail.com <mailto:schuster.wolfgang@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> […]
>> 
>> Use the command key which grabs the content of each column as argument (i.e. your commands needs as many arguments as your table has columns):
>> 
>> \defineseparatedlist
>>   [seplisttalk]
>>   [separator={;},
>>    command=\maketalk]
> 
> 
> Thanks Wolfgang! That fixes the issues concerning the entries which are text, but now the filename is not understood by the command \maketalk: here is the modified code:
> 
> %% begin database-command.tex
> \usemodule[database]
> 
> \starttext
> \startbuffer[pagetalk]
> 	\starttabulate[|f{\bi}l|p|][before=]%
> 	\NC Speaker \EQ 
> 	\goto{{\sc \getvariable{talk}{speakername}}}[fig:\getvariable{talk}{speakername}]
> 	 \NC\NR
> 	\NC Title   \EQ \getvariable{talk}{title}    \NC\NR
> 	\stoptabulate
> 	\startplacefigure[number=no]
> 		\externalfigure[\getvariable{talk}{picture}]
> 	\stopplacefigure
> 	\page
> \stopbuffer
> 
> \setvariable{talk}{set}{\getbuffer[pagetalk]}
> 
> \define[3]\maketalk{%
> 	\setvariables[talk]%
> 		[speakername={#1},
> 		title={#2},
> 		picture={#3},
> 		]}
> 
> \defineseparatedlist[seplisttalk]
> 	[separator={;},
> 	command=\maketalk]
> 
> \startseplisttalk
> {Hacker} ; {Up to date hacking} ; {hacker.jpg}
> Hacker ; Up to date hacking ; hacker.jpg
> \stopseplisttalk
> 
> \stoptext
> %% end database-command.tex