irexec, irpty, and xmacro

irexec is supposed to work with xmacro to send keystrokes.
irpty is supposed to send keystrokes, but possibly only ASCII.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=913671&highlight=lirc+system+volume

http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?title=Enabling_the_Multimedia_Keys_on_your_Keyboard&printable=yes

example macro for xmacro (mute.xmacro):
KeyStr XF86AudioMute

or maybe:
KeySym XF86AudioMute

http://xmacro.sourceforge.net/