I believe, you would need the setups, even if you had set up typescripts.  For some reason, the environments for footnotes and marginnotes are different from that of the main content's.

I got this solution from Wolfgang/Hans two years ago, so I suppose it's the officially recommended way.

I do not know how heavy setupdirections is, but this method, I guess, applies that command once per page.  It might be too much, but it's the price you pay for correct bidi formatting.  For example, I hate to see that I need to babysit page numbers (LTR) within Farsi text (RTL) in headers but that's life.

‪On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 8:22 AM ‫Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد‬‎ <Idris.Hamid@colostate.edu> wrote:‬
Salaam, Mohammad Hossein, Otared,

On Wed, 20 Jun 2018 15:27:56 -0600, Mohammad Hossein Bateni 
<bateni@gmail.com> wrote:

> \startsetups[bidi:footnotes]
> \setupdirections[bidi=on]
> \stopsetups
> \setupnotes[footnote][setups=bidi:footnotes]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2018 22:31:05 -0600, Otared Kavian <otared@gmail.com> wrote:

> %%%%% begin test-bidi-footnote.tex
> \setupdirections[bidi=global]
> \startsetups[bidi:footnotes]
> \setupdirections[bidi=on]
> \definedfont[file:almfixed.otf*arabic at 14pt]
> \stopsetups
> \setupnotes[footnote][setups=bidi:footnotes]
>
> \starttext
> \definedfont[file:almfixed.otf*arabic at 14pt]
> Test امتحان test
> \startfootnote
> Test امتحان test
> \stopfootnote{}
> \stoptext
> %%%%% end test-bidi-footnote.tex

Many thanks. Question: Is this use of setups now the "official" or 
preferred way to handle footnote typography options? On the surface, it 
appears to be overkill. For the declaration

\setupdirections[bidi=global]

shouldn't that mean that bidi is applied, well, globally?

For \definedfont the behavior is less surprising, since that is obviously 
a local command. But is setups the official way to globalize the command 
(aside from typescripts or simplefonts)?

Best wishes
Idris

>> On 20 Jun 2018, at 23:22, ⁨Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد⁩ 
>> <⁨Idris.Hamid@colostate.edu⁩> wrote:
>>
>> Dear gang,
>>
>> In the attached/following example, bidi is not applied in the footnote:
>>
>> \setupdirections[bidi=global]
>>
>> \starttext
>> \definedfont[file:almfixed.otf*arabic at 14pt]
>> Test امتحان test
>> \startfootnote
>> \definedfont[file:almfixed.otf*arabic at 14pt]
>> Test امتحان test
>> \stopfootnote{}
>> \stoptext
>>
>> Is there something else that I need to do? Thanks in advance!
>>
>> [Also: Is there a way to not have to declare \definedfont twice?]


--
Idris Samawi Hamid, Professor
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80512
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