Multimedia keys (XF86Audio*) not shown by xev, even though still working

Question

I'm using a Lenovo SL400 laptop, and even though the audio multimedia keys (XF86AudioPlay, XF86AudioStop, XF86AudioPrev and XF86AudioNext) are not shown with xev, they work anyway with Gmusicbrowser, Exaile and Rhythmbox.

I'm not using xbindkeys nor xmodmaprc.

Is this something normal? If xev doesn't see these keys, why those multimedia apps respond to them?

Edit:

I'm using Xubuntu 11.04, and with version 10.10 these keys were recognized by xev.

And with Xfce running on 11.04, through Settings manager, section Keyboard, these keys can be mapped to whaterever the user wants.

Answer 1

The issue here is twofold:

These music players don't react to the keystrokes themselves, but to some D-Bus events from the gnome-settings-daemon.

The gnome-settings-daemon might have grabbed them in a way that xev no longer sees them.

Other players, their plugins or other software might however try to access these keys directly and fail (since g-s-d already owns them).