I am using a remote pilot with LIRC 0.8.3 and XFCE 4.4.2. Everything works well, except when trying to generate keystrokes which are listed in Window Manager Settings (Alt+F1, Alt+Tab, Alt+F4, I didn't try other) of XFCE. My .lirc configuration is following: begin prog = irxevent button = Power config = Key alt-F4 CurrentWindow repeat = 0 end and I tried changing CurrentWindow to RootWindow. If alt-F4 is changed to, say, ctrl-w ("close tab" in mozilla) everything works as expected. Also, if it is changed to ctrl-q ("quit" in gedit) then it works.
Alt-Tab won't work for sure because as soon as you release Alt the switch ends. As for the others, I have no idea what lirc expects but quite frankly I am not much interested in making the WM compatible with lirc (you can submit a patc hfor review, I don't have the required hardware anyway)