Comment 3 for bug 263779

I also have this issue. It's extremely annoying!

Whenever evince is running, it "takes over" my media keys. When I press the "Play/Pause" button on my keyboard, evince goes fullscreen. What should happen is that the audio player (e.g. Rhythmbox) starts or stops playing. Pressing the "Previous" or "Next" keys skips forward or back a page in evince. What should happen is that the audio player plays the next or previous track.

The original function of the keys is not returned once evince is closed unless you focus Rhythmbox at some point:

 1. Start Rhythmbox.
 2. Press "Play/Pause" key. Track starts playing.
 3. Open evince and switch focus to another application (e.g. gedit, Firefox).
 4. Press "Play/Pause" key. Evince goes fullscreen.
 5. Exit evince.
 6. Press "Play/Pause" key. Nothing happens.
 7. Focus Rhthmbox.
 8. Press "Play/Pause" key. Tracks is paused (expected behaviour).
 9. Defocus Rhythmbox. Press "Play/Pause" key. Track starts playing (expected behaviour).

In summary, evince should not capture the multimedia keys, nor indeed any global keyboard shortcuts.

Settings in System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts:
    Play (or Play/Pause): XF86AudioPlay
    Previous Track: XF86AudioPrev
    Next Track: XF86AudioNext

evince 2.23.6-0ubuntu1
rhythmbox 0.11.6svn20080807-0ubuntu1
gnome-settings-daemon 2.23.91-0ubuntu1

Ubuntu intrepid, fully updated (Wednesday 3-Sept-08)